


Aphorism

by powerandpathos



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Blow Jobs, Explicit Sex, M/M, Triad - Freeform, Zhengxi is in college, begins the day Jian Yi returns, idk it's just a feels ride, mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 12:45:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 38
Words: 124,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8402224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: Jian Yi fell back into Zhengxi's life as if he had never gone; He Tian wanted Guan Shan in his and for him to never leave. But this isn't middle school, and they are no longer children, and nothing is that simple anymore.
  Read in русский!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted: thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/tagged/aphorismc/chrono

The door opened. 

And they stared at each other. 

And then, slowly, they moved inside, a too-small apartment that had every possible room pushed into one. Jian Yi sat in an armchair that had socks over it and an old packet of crisps shoved down the side. Zhengxi sat on the edge of his bed, and rubbed his palms across his thighs, and he hadn’t blinked for a while.

He swallowed, loud enough for Jian Yi to hear his throat click, bone dry. ‘Where’ve you been?’ he said.

‘Oh, around,’ Jian Yi told him, shrugging, pulling at the hairband on his wrist. He’d bought it recently and it was still too tight, the elastic too strong, and it left red imprints in his skin. ‘Here, there. I went to Maui for a bit. Beautiful place. Awesome storms. And then Wales, which was kind of beautiful in its own way. Have you been? Russia was cold. No one smiled much. And Prague – I mean, the language was kind of odd but _wow_ that _architecture_. Did you know—’

‘Where the _fuck_. Have you been.’

Jian Yi coughed, and scratched the back of his neck. ‘Er. I was kind of telling you.’

‘I looked for you. For months. A year. I thought I was losing my mind. Thought I’d made you up. The teachers wouldn’t say anything – didn’t know anything. Your mother just _left_. I thought – I thought you were _dead_.’

A groan. His sheets moved. Why were his sheets moving?

‘Who’s that?’

‘No one. She’s no one.’

‘Ah, fuck,’ Jian Yi said. Stood and ran his hand through his hair. It was getting long, but he thought Zhengxi would like it. It was kind of hitting him now that he probably shouldn’t have done things because someone else liked them. Even if it was him. ‘This was… a mistake,’ Jian Yi said. ‘I shouldn’t have come here.’

‘ _No_ ,’ Zhengxi said, and he was standing too, holding out a hand so that it almost brushed Jian Yi’s shirt, but didn’t quite get there. The space was infinitesimal, but it was a space, and it said enough. ‘No, you should have. You should be here. Just – just wait, okay? Let me get rid of her. Just wait. Please.’

He waited, moved into the small U-shaped kitchen that didn’t have any plates and could probably do with a clean. He turned the tap on for no reason, but he didn’t want to hear them talk. He felt awkward in a way that things didn’t used to be, listening to the confused murmurs of the girl, the rustle of a sheet, and Zhengxi’s detached words that had a hurried insistence to them. Or, maybe things were always awkward and Jian Yi chose to ignore it because that was easier to do than when he didn’t. When he didn’t ignore it he used to start crying and his nose would get snotty and Zhengxi would only look at him like he wanted to run. So he pretended like it wasn’t. Awkward, that is. But now his limbs felt awkward, and where did people put their hands normally?

‘She’s gone,’ Zhengxi said.

‘Yeah, I did notice the half-naked girl that you just pushed out the door.’

‘She’ll get over it.’ His words had a _They always do_ tacked silently on the end.

They were both standing, and Zhengxi had a kind of desperate look on his face. A kind of… Jian Yi didn’t know what to call it. Like he was waiting for something. Eyes darting across Jian Yi’s face like he was looking for something to come and appear. The old him, maybe? Maybe ready for him to disappear again? Maybe he was checking to see if he was the Real Thing.

‘Do you… Do you want to go and get something to eat?’

‘It’s like four o’clock in the morning,’ Jian Yi said.

‘You’re here,’ he said. ‘Someone else has got to be up and cooking somewhere.’

‘What about that place on Dongmeng? Is that still open?’

‘Maybe. I haven’t been there in… Years.’

It was open. There were two men there wearing crumpled suits and slurping at a bowl of noodles. A group of teenagers who should have been in bed and were busy showing one another other what someone else had posted online.

And then there were the two of them. Jian Yi wondered what they looked like – to the men in their old suits and the scruff on their face that was days old, and to the kids who had been like them once except that they had always looked at each other more than their phones.

The kitchen was really only a make-shift table beneath a tarpaulin sheet, the cook’s fire hissing from a couple of outdoor camping stoves that were running out of gas, but it was warm enough and they could hear birds singing ready for the rising sun. Cars passed infrequently, and every once in a while someone would walk or cycle past, shadows thrown onto the pavement beneath the street lamps, and Jian Yi couldn’t understand what people were doing walking through the streets at four a.m.  

The woman behind the kitchen nodded at them as they sat on a bench, and for a while they didn’t say anything, just watched the other people and not each other, and Jian Yi almost wished he had a phone just so he could scroll through empty chat messages and social media with no updates and no contacts.

‘You’re not hungry?’

Jian Yi looked at him, holding out a menu. It was coated in plastic laminate, the corners were peeling away from the paper, and the pictures and text were splashed with grease and other people’s food.

‘I’ll have whatever you’re having,’ he told him. He missed the food, the mellow, salty soups, the modest desserts that never overshadowed the main meals, the fish he used to spend hours picking bones out of with a monkish care, and thought it was always worth it, just to taste the small morsels of flesh, proud of some small, humble achievement.

‘Soup?’ Zhengxi said, eyes running down the menu. There were only five things on it, really, four if you didn’t include the fried eel that had been scratched out in biro.

‘Sure. But I don’t want any—’

‘Bamboo shoots. Yeah, I know.’

Jian Yi swallowed, and stared at Zhengxi’s back as he stood up and gave their order to the woman in the ‘kitchen’. His shoulders were broader, but he’d always been broader, and he was taller, and Jian Yi wondered if he was taller than him now. After middle school Jian Yi hadn’t changed much; he’d grown sharper in the face and his wrists seemed thinner and the veins in his hands stood out more now. He felt like he’d grown smaller where Zhengxi seemed bigger. Older. Did Zhengxi think he looked different?

‘I got you a beer,’ Zhengxi said, putting the bottles on the table. ‘I didn’t know what you wanted.’

‘Ah, I don’t drink.’

‘Oh. Well let me get you—’

‘No, it’s fine.’ Jian Yi wrapped a hand around the bottle. It was lukewarm, but the sticker felt wet when he rubbed his thumb over it, and he was satisfied just to sit there and peel it off.

‘Don’t force yourself to drink it.’

‘You can have it when you’ve finished yours.’

Zhengxi was frowning, but he raised his bottle to his lips and took a long swallow. Jian Yi watched the way his throat moved around it, and a muscled jumped in the side of his neck.

‘So,’ Zhengxi asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a sticky wet trail that glistened in the orange glow of the streetlamps. ‘How come you don’t drink?

Jian Yi shrugged. ‘I stopped after I kept doing stupid things when I got drunk. And I never really liked the taste.’

‘Sensible.’

‘Just like me.’

The words hovered, hanging there, and then Jian Yi let a small grin work its way onto his face, and Zhengxi just rolled his eyes, head shaking, throat exposed as he took another swig.

The cook came over then, and put the soup and the bowls of rice on the table. It was simple, and tasted simple, and Jian Yi felt something stuck in the base of his throat as he swallowed until his bowls were empty, and only nodded his thanks when she brought over more.

Zhengxi ate his slowly. He always had done, weirdly meticulous about the whole ceremonial simplicity of eating, but he had barely touched his by the time Jian Yi finished his second serving.

‘D’you want mine?’ he said.

Really, he couldn’t have eaten another thing, but Zhengxi’s look was such that he didn’t think he could say no to him about anything, not even if it was to eat his food.

Zhengxi pushed his bowls forward, and it was then that Jian Yi noticed his hands.

He reached for them, unthinking, because that’s what he used to do, and the shock only faintly registered that Zhengxi did not immediately pull them away, which was what he used to do.

‘You’re still fighting?’ he said, soft. Zhengxi’s knuckles, under his thumbs, were swollen and scabbed and Jian Yi could feel the scar tissue that had built up beneath it.

It was then that Zhengxi did pull away, and he put his hands under the table, like Jian Yi couldn’t see them there and thus didn’t know what they looked like – what they felt like.

‘Don’t have anyone pulling me out of trouble anymore, do I?’ he said.

Jian Yi might have felt some sort of heartache at that, some sort of guilt, which was not to say that he _didn’t_ , but outwardly he only blinked at him. ‘I think it was probably the other way around, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘I remember you holding onto my shirt collar far more than I ever had to hold you back. I mean. If anything you were the one that got into fights _because_ of me.’

Zhengxi made a contemplative noise, and washed it down with beer. ‘That’s probably more accurate,’ he said. ‘Not sure why I don’t remember you being such a little shit, though.’

‘Probably because you never noticed while you were, you know, _getting into fights for me_. Which, I mean, says a lot.’

‘That I was an idiot? Yeah. Got that loud and clear.’

Jian Yi passed him his untouched beer, the other bottle empty and fracturing the orange light through the green glass, and supposed it was only fair after he had eaten all of Zhengxi’s food.

‘You know what I meant.’

‘I don’t, actually,’ Zhengxi said. Something hard had started to creep in, and Jian Yi had absently been wondering when it would. ‘I don’t know what you mean at all. So if you want to enlighten me, I’m all ears.’

‘ _Ha_ …’ Jian Yi said, more a sigh than a laugh. An exhalation. _Whoo, boy,_ it said. _Where do I start?_ ‘I guess I should probably apologise.’

‘Should you?’

‘Zhengxi, I didn’t… I didn’t plan for any of this. I don’t know what to tell you.’

‘That wasn’t an apology. And if it was it fucking _sucked_.’

Jian Yi swallowed. He looked at the mess of soggy paper he’d torn off the beer bottle, lying in a pile on the table that was stained with beer and oil and bird shit. He wanted to wash his hands.

He looked at Zhengxi, who was giving him that look again. The searching one. The utterly incomprehensible one, like he had never looked at anything that made less sense than Jian Yi did right about now. Which probably wasn’t far off.

‘Where did you _go_?’ he whispered. ‘I looked everywhere for you. Waited for you. I waited so long.’

Jian Yi swallowed, felt his jaw tighten. He looked away.

‘Everyone told me to stop. Everyone told me I should give up. That I should just forget about you.’

‘Zhengxi…’

‘Were they right? Should I have?’

‘Well, did you?’

‘What?’

‘Did you give up?’

‘What do you think?’

Jian Yi _thought_ he’d turned up at Zhengxi’s apartment and there’d been a girl in his bed. He thought he’d turned up and Zhengxi had almost seemed _inconvenienced_ that he’d appeared in his life again, like he’d set some part of him aside, left it behind, and hadn’t realised he’d have to go _back_ to it. But he thought also that Zhengxi didn’t have to tell her to leave, pushing her out the door before she could a chance to button up her _shirt_ Jesus _Christ_ and he thought he wouldn’t have asked him to a place that they use to go to when they were in school just so they could eat soup that didn’t even taste of much and that Zhengxi didn’t even eat and drink beer that Jian Yi didn’t even drink at four in the fucking _morning_.

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ he whispered, and dug his heels into his eyes until he saw stars on his eyelids.

When he let them fall again he saw that Zhengxi was crying, red-eyed, teeth digging so hard into his lower lip they looked ready to break the skin. He didn’t know when he’d last seen him cry, and he felt like he was watching something that he shouldn’t be, like being a kid and watching adults kiss when you knew they were married, and not to each other.

‘Zhengxi,’ Jian Yi said. His back was hunched over the table and he just looked at him, hands bunched in the fabric of his jeans above his knees. And Zhengxi was just staring up, so his eyes caught the light, and Jian Yi could see how full they were, and how much they seemed to waver. ‘Xixi. Zhan Xixi. Zhan Xioxi.’

‘Fuck off, Jian Yi.’

Jian Yi swallowed. ‘Like, seriously? Because I can go. If that’s what you really want.’

And then: ‘Don’t you fucking dare go anywhere.’

Jian Yi nodded, even if he felt confused. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I can do that. Maybe.’

‘You’re not going out of my sight.’

‘Do you want to look at me then? ‘Cause I might disappear. You know. If you keep looking at the stars.’

‘Stars can’t lie,’ Zhengxi said. ‘Can’t disappear.’

‘Yeah, they can. They do. Every time the sun comes up.’

‘At least it’s planned. At least you’ve got forewarning or some shit.’ His eyes slid to his. He wasn’t crying anymore, but he looked fucking miserable, and it broke Jian Yi’s heart. ‘At least you can prepare yourself for how much it’s going to hurt.’


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149368342779/aphorism-ii-a-19-days-fanfiction

They went back to Zhengxi’s, while the sky was turning a hazy blue-grey of dawn, and the cars started filling the roads. 

They didn’t talk much as they wandered along the pavements, down streets where nothing was open but a poorly lit fuel station and a convenience store with old magazine covers and posters spread across the windows.

Zhengxi’s apartment was nestled in a cluster of other apartments, above a bakery that had already started letting steam fill the windows and always made his stomach ache when he woke up in the mornings. The neighbours in his complex were mostly commuters who got an hour-long train in the morning to Shanghai, young business owners that had set up selling computer chips or graphic design or technical solutions form their offices in Nanjing, or new couples moving into their first apartment. Not many were students, like Zhengxi, and he hadn’t seen any of his neighbours around the university.

‘You still own your place in Taipingmen?’ Zhengxi asked, turning the key in the door to his apartment.

‘Yeah,’ Jian Yi said, following him inside. ‘My mother wanted to keep it. You know, for emergencies.’

Zhengxi wondered if it had always been like that. If Jian Yi used to go home and know that everything there was temporary, that he wouldn’t be there long.

There’d been boxes in the living room when he’d last been there, fumbling for the light switch as he carried Jian Yi on his back, drunk and passed out. Not, he now realised, because Jian Yi or his mother hadn’t bothered to unpack, but because it was easier to put things back in there in case they needed to leave.

Slowly, Zhengxi was beginning to see this. Beginning to see those small cracks, the tell-tale signs that he should have caught onto when he was a kid. Used to think he was so observant, that he knew everything, except when it came to Jian Yi. Maybe that was why he never caught on that he was going to leave one day. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

‘I knew you weren’t gone,’ Zhengxi said, toeing his shoes off at the door. He grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge and tossed one to Jian Yi. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, long and thin and wearing a shirt that sort of drowned him and made him look pale. ‘I knew you weren’t gone when I saw it hadn’t been sold.’

‘You shouldn’t, ah, you shouldn’t have…’

‘Been so obsessed?’

Jian Yi shook his head. He cracked the seal on the lid and took deep swallows. ‘You shouldn’t have let me get in the way of you living your life. Even when I wasn’t there.’

‘Typical, isn’t it?’ Zhengxi said, hip propped against the dresser at the side of the bed. The room was so small, so the drawers didn’t open fully. ‘You were gone and still managed to drive me insane.’

‘Part of my charm.’

‘Huh.’ Zhengxi moved. ‘Let me, er—’ He started tugging at the corners of the bedsheets on the mattress, throwing the duvet and pillows onto the floor. ‘I’ll get new ones.’

‘Let me help—’

‘ _No_ ,’ Zhengxi snapped. ‘No. Just. Just let me do it.’

Jian Yi let him, as he shoved the old sheets in the washing machine and put in too much detergent, and clambered on the bed to try and get the new sheet beneath the corners of the mattress, shirt riding up so Jian Yi could see the curve of his hips and the hardness of his back.

Jian Yi didn’t lift a finger.

‘There,’ Zhengxi said, once it was made and looked clean and crisp and white.

‘Looks like a photo in a catalogue,’ Jian Yi said.

‘We didn’t have sex. Me and that girl. We don’t.’

Jian Yi blinked. He sat back on the bed. ‘Okay?’

‘It was just messing about. Liu Min is… We’re not interested in each other but it’s better than a right hand.’

‘Okay.’

‘I just— Felt like I should explain myself.’            

‘You don’t have to explain – what you _do._ To me. To anyone. It’s your business.’

‘I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea. That I’m that sort of person. Who – who gets into fights and fucks around with random women and drinks all the time.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘What?’

‘I didn’t think that,’ Jian Yi said. He nodded to the stack of laundry piled on the dresser behind Zhengxi. ‘You still wear superhero underwear. You still keep bottles of water in the fridge even though you know the tap water’s perfectly fine. You still don’t smoke. You keep a second set of clean sheets in your drawers and you _iron_ them. I mean, look at these! Not a single crease!’

‘Jian Yi…’

‘You haven’t changed, Xixi. Not that much. Not in three years. I know you.’ He shrugged, looked at his hands. ‘And – and even if you had. I wouldn’t mind. You’re my best friend. I didn’t knock on your door tonight because I was looking for the old you. I knocked because – because I didn’t know who else I could come back to, and I knew I could come to you. Someone who I wouldn’t care had changed. Someone who wouldn’t care if _I_ had changed.’

‘You haven’t changed either, Jian Yi.’

‘Haven’t I?’ he said.

It would have been easy to say no. To brush across the question like it was redundant. But his voice was too quiet, and it was edged, and Zhengxi could see that he wasn’t the same. Hated that he could see it. He wasn’t loose in the way he held himself. Didn’t just do whatever the fuck he wanted – _say_ whatever the fuck he wanted anymore. It had barely been three hours, and already Zhengxi knew that.

‘You can borrow some clothes to sleep in,’ he said instead. ‘Top drawer.’

Jian Yi sighed, like he was relieved Zhengxi hadn’t pushed it, but like he’d almost wanted him to. ‘Thanks. I don’t really have much with me.’

‘You’ve got nothing with you.’

‘Well, I was trying not to sound like a homeless moocher,’ he said. He was rifling through the drawers, messing up the clothes Zhangxi had folded. Not on purpose, just with a kind of fragmented mindlessness, like he didn’t even realise he was doing it.

‘You’ve got a home.’

Jian Yi shrugged. ‘Not really. Homes aren’t meant to be empty, Xixi.’

When they were sixteen they’d entered a local race, not very long, because Jian Yi had wanted the bag they gave to the winners. It had a bag of sweets in and a medal and some flyers and a t-shirt. Jian Yi was sick on the start line because he’d drank too many sports drinks that morning, so Zhengxi ran it for him, just for the stupid bag.

It was the t-shirt that he found in the drawers then – maybe that he had been looking for, because he’d always needed something to change into when he went to Zhengxi’s house and it seemed easier just to leave something – and a pair of Zhengxi’s old tracksuit bottoms from high school. They were ratty and the hem around the ankles were scuffed and there were holes in the fabric.

Zhengxi didn’t turn his back as Jian Yi pulled his shirt over his head, yanked his jeans down, and Zhengxi had to stifle a gasp, or any noise that might give him away, let his thoughts be known.

He was thin. Thinner than his baggy shirt and his jeans showed, shoulder blades and ribs pressing beneath the skin.

And the _scars._

‘Jian Yi,’ he whispered.

He looked at him over his shoulder as he stepped into the bottoms, followed his gaze to the angry marks down his back. Some were old and faded like marked wallpaper. Others… they were red and fresher and looked sore, angry welts that marred his pale skin.

‘What the _fuck_?’

Jian Yi pulled on the rest of the clothes, with the same kind of obliviousness as before, but this time his fingers worked faster, and the t-shirt he pulled over his head mussed up his hair as he yanked it.

‘Forgot about those,’ he said, with an easy, affable laugh. ‘It happened a while ago.’

‘ _Forget_? A _while_?’ Zhengxi walked over and yanked the t-shirt up to his neck. Jian Yi’s head bowed, letting him look, like he knew he couldn’t stop him. ‘Jian Yi, these are _new_. These are… What the _fuck_?’

Up close he saw them more clearly; they weren’t neat; they were jagged and the skin poorly knitted together. The scarring was raised and solid and the cuts must have been so deep to leave him like this.

Slowly, Jian Yi turned, and Zhengxi had to let go of his t-shirt. When he faced him, he wore a smile, but it was not a smile. Not really.

‘Guess I owe you an explanation, huh?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149368342779/aphorism-ii-a-19-days-fanfiction


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149379608619/aphorism-iii-a-19-days-fanfic

‘When I was seven my dad got put away.’

‘As in—’

‘He killed someone, Zhengxi. He killed  _a lot_ of people. Innocent people. Hurt a lot more too. My mother…’ He took in a breath. ‘She knew this, and she brought me to Nanjing. She brought me to your neighbourhood, and to that school. We spent a  _long_ time making sure that my dad’s – his  _company_  never knew where my mother went.’ 

He drank more from the bottle of water. Probably, this was not because his throat was dry, but because he was trying to think about how to say the words in a way that would stop Zhengxi looking at him like he  _knew_ he was looking as he listened.

‘She worked with the police a lot to try and figure out who my dad had been working with,’ he continued. ‘To figure out where he used to – to put people’s bodies. For their families, you know? She could never be seen with me much. Not because she was so busy – which, I mean, she  _was_  – but so that if my dad’s co-workers ever saw me and her they wouldn’t put two and two together.’

‘Why did you need to hide from him?’ Zhengxi said softly. ‘Because you…?’

‘He was looking for me because he’s got delusions that I’d join his company. Take over from him when I was old enough. And he was looking for my mother because she was the one that turned him in.’

‘And he did? Find you?’

‘He Tian’s brother works for a security company that sometimes worked for my dad. They were keeping tabs on me for – a long time.’

Realisation, not unlike a bomb, was hitting him. ‘That’s who those guys were in middle school,’ he said breathily. He sank down onto the bed, hands gripping his knees.

‘I think He Tian was trying to keep his brother and the rest of them away from me,’ Jian Yi said. ‘I don’t know the full story. I just know that he couldn’t do that forever. And I got home one night, and no one was home, which was normal, but they were waiting for me.’

‘They kidnapped you.’

‘I mean… Yeah.’ He laughed darkly. ‘There’s no better way of saying it, is there?’

‘They took you. They took you out of China.’

‘Yeah. My dad has a few planes so it wasn’t an issue. He wanted me to be, what did he call it,  _globally acculturated_. Make sure I knew his clientele. Make sure I could keep myself safe.’

‘And by safe you mean get ripped to fucking shreds.’

‘At first—’

‘Don’t lie to me.’

Jian Yi sighed, ran a hand over his mouth, thumb across his lips. ‘Okay, I was fucking terrible. Couldn’t even block a basic punch. I’m not so bad now, but… The idea was just to be able to get away and move somewhere else. Not get in a knife fight. I’m something of an expert in running away now.’

‘Did they ever hurt you? Just to hurt you?’

‘What?’ Jian Yu said, confused. He was shaking his head. ‘No. No, they were… It was tough. I hated it. But they weren’t intentionally cruel. They wanted me to get better. Be like my dad.’

‘Why you? Why train some kid just because you have your dad’s blood?’

‘Because it’s hereditary. The position. My family’s owned this… company for a long time.’

‘You haven’t said Triad. You haven’t. But…’

Jian Yi chewed the inside of his cheek. ‘You said you didn’t want me to lie.’

‘Jesus fuck, Jian Yi.’

Zhengxi didn’t  _get_ it. He knew things weren’t right. Knew when the men had turned up in black to drag him from his apartment, limbs kicking, hand over his mouth, that things weren’t right. All he knew was that he’d failed him – hadn’t protected him like he should. Now, like the boxes in the living room in Jian Yi’s house, it made sense. Shouldn’t have. Knowing your best friend’s father was a murderer who led an organised crime group – it wasn’t  _normal._ He’d grown up with an annoying kid sister and two parents who worked normal hours at their job and he’d gone to university because that’s what people were supposed to  _do._ Not go globetrotting with a group of people that trained you to fight and got you on a first-name basis with mob leaders and crime lords.

But none of that mattered, did it? He was back. He came  _here_. That should have been enough, shouldn’t it?

‘How are you here? How did you get away?’

‘I’m not answering that.’

Zhengxi felt cold. Because if he could talk about how his dad  _killed_  people but couldn’t talk about this, then he didn’t want to know what he’d done. What could possibly have happened that he couldn’t tell him? Couldn’t tell  _him_? Couldn’t, really, even make something up and just lie to him?

‘Jian Yi.’

‘No, Zhengxi,’ he said, looking straight at him. ‘I’ve given you everything else. More than I wanted to. And believe me I  _want_ you to know. I want to feel like you know and deserve to know everything about me. But I can’t.’  

Zhengxi swallowed. He had to let that be enough. ‘Are you – are you at risk here?’

‘Do you mean have I put you in danger coming here?’

His eyes shot wide. ‘ _No_!’ he cried. ‘No, I meant – are  _you_ in danger? Are you still living like you’re hiding?’

‘No. They know exactly where I am now. Always.’

Zhengxi blinked. ‘And that’s – you’re okay with that?’

‘I like to think of them as my guardian angels. Except they’re not really angels. Or guardians.’

‘So… They’re stalkers. Basically.’

‘Basically. And you don’t need to worry. So long as I’m with you, you’re safe.’

‘Not because you can protect me but because your father belongs to a part of the Triad with constant surveillance on you.’

‘Well, when you put it like that…’

Zhengxi put his head in his hands, rubbing his face until the friction almost hurt. He was going insane, wasn’t he? Maybe a camera crew would climb out from beneath his bed and shout ‘ _Surprise_!’ Or maybe in a minute his alarm would go off for class and he’d open his eyes and the room would be stuffy with the building end-of-summer heat and Jian Yi would still be gone.

It was not a question of whether he’d rather that last one. He wouldn’t. No matter how Jian Yi had gotten to him – no matter how things had turned out, he was here. On his bed. Any of this was better than him not being there at all.

* * *

They talked more, after that. Zhengxi leaned against his dresser until the base of his spine started ache and Jian Yi sat on the corner of his bed until he couldn’t lift his head anymore and his words slurred like he was drunk. The sun was bright and full by the time they pulled the sheets over them, and Zhengxi couldn’t exactly say when that happened, but he remembered pulling the blinds down and the room being cast into stark shadows of light and dark, and he remembered staring at Jian Yi’s face so close to his on the pillow.

His lashes were so long and his lips were a bit chapped and there was a tiny sliver of a scar above his eyebrow that he hadn’t noticed. More time passed, and he stayed awake, even when he knew he should have been in a lecture for Cosmology right about then, and he didn’t shift when Jian Yi pulled himself across the sheets and Zhengxi could feel every bit of him, everything that was soft and hard and his bones that were too sharp and his breath that was warm on his face as he slept.

And he didn’t move, but he wished he had, just to put his arm around him. Just to make sure, that when he finally fell asleep as the cars had started to quieten again outside his window and the doors had stopped closing and the kids stopped shouting in the hallway, that he would still be there again when he woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149379608619/aphorism-iii-a-19-days-fanfic


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149414360949/aphorism-iv-a-19-days-fanfic

‘He’s still sleeping, so don’t be loud. And take off your shoes. And don’t you fucking dare light a cigarette in here. I swear if you do anything to him I will _cut_ —’

‘He’s thin.’

He Tian heard him swallow, heard the rasp of stubble as Zhan ran a hand across his mouth. ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, quiet. ‘I took him to get some food last night. This morning. I don’t know.’

He Tian didn’t say anything. For some reason he couldn’t stop looking at him, asleep on the bed in the far corner of the room. Looking at how pale he was against the white sheets. How long his hair was. How he somehow stayed in the bed while every limb seemed to be hanging off the edge. How young he still looked, when the rest of them, barely or not even twenty, all seemed so much fucking older.

‘Is he – is he all right? As in…’

He Tian didn’t know what he meant by ‘as in’, but Zhan seemed to get it. He shrugged, small and uncertain and in no way blasé. He was standing between him and Jian Yi, and maybe he didn’t really mean it, but everything about him screamed _back off_ – the curved set to his shoulders, the eyes he might not have realised he was narrowing. It was like He Tian could look if he wanted to, but Zhan wasn’t actually going to let him get closer if he tried. 

He Tian was beginning to wonder how much it had taken for him to press ‘Send’ on his phone. To let him be included in this little moment of wonder and glorious relief that he could have had all to himself for a few days – weeks, even – before He Tian ever managed to find out.  He thought that was pretty decent of him, mostly because he knew he would never do the same.  

Setting other people against his own behaviour became a pretty easy way to judge someone else’s character, but it also tended to be a bit depressing sometimes, because people were usually far nicer – far better – than he had ever been.  

‘I don’t know,’ Zhan told him eventually. ‘I think so. He’s been through a lot of shit that he shouldn’t have.’

‘Yeah,’ He Tian said.  

He didn’t know what he meant by that either, but there was something about Jian Yi that was different, even as he lay there and slept. He used to be so light, so magnetic. And there was that same kind of pull to him, the same drawing in, but now it didn’t feel like sighing to look at him. It didn’t feel like catharsis, like being around someone who made things simple and seemed to laugh and smile so much easier than anyone else and made you want for what they had. To look at Jian Yi now felt like being pulled into something that might not treat you kindly, which is what people, incidentally, used to say about him.

‘Did he say anything?’

‘He said a lot of things.’

‘Did he say where he’d been?’

‘He mentioned your brother.’

The nausea came upon him slowly, until He Tian was pretty sure he was going to be sick. He sank into the armchair, ears ringing, vision flashing white. He said, ‘I didn’t know.’

‘I didn’t think you did.’ Maybe that was the case, but He Tian heard the relief in his voice, and he didn’t blame him. He would have doubted himself too.  

‘I asked him. He said he had nothing to do with it.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘After a while I had to.’

He Tian knew that Zhan must have known how he felt. That, after a while, you had to accept some things, some inevitabilities. Jian Yi, as much as neither of them wanted to admit it, was one of those. It didn’t mean they thought the worst – that he was dead. They just had to acknowledge that maybe he really wasn’t coming back. Had chosen a future that wasn’t them, or didn’t have them in it.  

He looked at Jian Yi again, eyes drawn to him like he was watching porn. Knowing he shouldn’t. Knowing that there were better things to be doing. That he’d seen and fucked better than the people on the screen. But knowing that it felt _good_ , too.  

‘Don’t look at him like that.’

He Tian blinked up at him from the armchair. Zhan had moved in front of him, a sentry on duty.  

‘Like what,’ He Tian said.  

‘Like you are.’

He felt a smirk creeping across his face, and he couldn’t help that it was mocking and knowing, because the burn in Zhan’s eyes and the hard set of his jaw said everything. It was, if nothing else, a challenge. Not one he was particularly bothered about winning, he had realised some time ago. It was around that time – or maybe it coincided with the fact – that He Tian realised that being with Jian Yi like that had never really interested him.  

It was easy to confuse the kind of quiet envy he had felt – the jealousy, the boyhood desire to be someone’s friend, to have a less complex, hormone-charged version of what Zhan and Jian Yi had – with wanting to fuck someone. This was not to say he hadn’t thought about it, dreamed about it at first, sheets wet and sticky as he verged on the cusp of adolescence, or that he would not say no if the opportunity arose. (And he knew from experience that sometimes, bizarrely, they could.) But no. Zhan didn’t need to tell him to back off when he didn’t really want him like that, and knew that Jian Yi could never, more importantly, be his.  

He held his hands up, palms flat, surrendered.  

‘I’m just glad to see he’s alive. That’s all.’

‘Yeah? Well be glad in some way that doesn’t make you look like a creep.’

‘Impossible with looks like mine.’

‘Fuck off,’ Zhan said, but it lacked bite.  

It was at some indeterminable point during their conversation that, unbeknownst to either of them, Jian Yi had slowly started to wake up. It was only when they heard the rustle of sheets, and the quiet noise of confusion – was that a whimper? – that they fell silent.  

If He Tian had been in quiet rapture at his sleeping form, it was not quite something that compared to watching his eyes get to focus as he blinked away sleep, to watching his lips move around nonsensical words and his throat swallow in that awful morning thirst. To seeing what he looked like in the morning and having that first thing he really saw be you.  

‘Hey, fucker,’ He Tian said.  

Jian Yi grinned. ‘Still alive, dickwad?’

All of this was to say, of course, that he had, for some impossible reason, really quite missed him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149414360949/aphorism-iv-a-19-days-fanfic


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149429320789/aphorism-v-a-19-days-fanfic

Nanjing University was big and old and covered in ivy leaves and bathed in red as the sun was setting. Students were wandering about drinking iced coffee and smoking cigarettes and carrying binders stacked with neatly filed notes. It was old, but Jian Yi had seen things that were older, and it was beautiful, but Jian Yi had seen things that were more so. He wondered when he would stop thinking of things in terms of how much they surpassed or didn’t surpass something else, and knew that it probably wouldn’t be a while.

Life, he had begun to realise, was one huge, collective comparison of past experiences.

‘You can stay with me a few days,’ Zhengxi was telling him, ‘but it can’t be forever.’

‘Why not?’ He didn’t get it. They were best friends, weren’t they? How many times had he stayed over at Zhengxi’s as a kid and they’d pretend that they lived together? That is was their home and no one else’s, a fort they had to guard from the Outsiders.

‘Because… because you need your own place. And I need my space so I can… Can…’

‘Bring back girls to fuck without me getting in the way?’

‘That is _not_ fair.’

‘Wasn’t, really, was it?’

Jian Yi tugged at the hem of his t-shirt. He Tian was standing off having a cigarette, which he probably shouldn’t have been doing, while they sat on the grass in the main quad, in front of the North Admin Building and Jian Yi imagined that this was his university, too.

‘I just thought…’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I thought things might go back to how they were. First day of school. All that excitement. Everything we had in front of us. We were a year older than everyone else, too. We would have ruled that place.’

Zhengxi leaned back, sighing, and he nestled his head into the grass so that Jian Yi _knew_ he’d be pulling strands out for hours later. ‘You were held back because you couldn’t go to school while your mother tried to keep you away from your psychotic mob dad and I was held back for fighting and a general attitude problem. Doesn’t really scream royalty.’

‘Not all rulers are kings and queens, Xixi.’

Zhengxi just rolled his eyes, probably because he didn’t want to acknowledge that Jian Yi’s voice sounded a bit darker than it should have, and probably because he thought he was a dumb shit, which he was most of the time.

‘It’s okay,’ Jian Yi told him. ‘I know why you don’t want me there.’

‘Why’s that then?’

‘The _real_ reason is that you think I’ll eat all your food and spoil the ending to your books and make you watch crappy TV and go and spend money on movies you never really liked or I’d made you see before.’

He watched the smile that twitched on Zhengxi’s lips, and felt his own face soften to watch it. ‘Yeah, Jian Yi. That’s exactly it.’

It wasn’t, and they knew it wasn’t, but it was enough for Jian Yi to cling to for now.

‘So tell us then.’ They both looked up as He Tian shadowed over them. He lowered himself onto the ground and leaned back on his hands, legs outstretched, face lifted to the sun like he was at the beach. The whole thing, Jian Yi thought, was unnaturally smooth, something a bit preternatural about it, like the slow sink and rise of shoulder blades in a panther’s back as it prowled.

‘Tell you what?’ Jian Yi said.

‘What the big plan is,’ He Tian said. Smoke was still creeping from the corners of his mouth and the smell of tobacco clung to his black clothes. He pulled a small packet from his back pocket that Jian Yi at first thought was weed and then what he realised, as He Tian started chewing, were mint leaves. ‘You decided to grace us all with your presence for a reason, I hope?’

‘And if I didn’t? If I just decided to come back?’

‘Then your life is not the one I thought you’d lead.’

Jian Yi could see Zhengxi watching the two of them, as if he was realising that at some point Jian Yi had scrambled up, all elbows and broken fingernails, and seemed to almost balance on the same level as He Tian. He didn’t want to tell him he was past that, that muffled, lingering unsettling that He Tian had carried around him as a kid and still did. Jian Yi had been past that for a while. 

‘I’m going to high school,’ he said. ‘Get some more qualifications.’

For a second, a brief, perfunctory moment, none of them said anything. 

And then He Tian tipped his head back and laughed, and the students that were milling about looked over, bathing in the loud confidence of it like it was sinking afternoon sun. ‘Jian Yi the high schooler. Fuck me. Thought we were past all that.’

‘I liked the uniform,’ Jian Yi said, shrugging.

‘Always knew you had weird fetishes.’

‘You’re not serious, are you?’ Zhengxi said.

Jian Yi looked at him. ‘About the uniform?’

‘About going back.’

‘Well you’re here in this fancy university. I’ve got to have some aspirations.’

‘You decided all of this because I’m _here_? You didn’t know I was a student until yesterday.’

‘I decided a while back, actually.’

Zhengxi quietened, probably thinking he’d offended Jian Yi by suggesting he wasn’t that committed – that it wasn’t in his remit to have goals like that. Maybe he’d forgotten that it was always Jian Yi’s homework that he used to copy. But apparently Zhengxi had done all right when he went away. _Better than all right_ , Jian Yi thought, looking at the old buildings, the ivy, the students’ clothing that was simple and chic but probably not cheap. Getting into a university was rare enough in China. Rarer that you’d ever get into a place like _this_.

‘You won’t finish until you’re twenty-two,’ Zhengxi told him.

‘Twenty-one, actually. Twenty if you count the fact that my birthday wouldn’t be until _after_ I graduate.’

‘High school is three years, Jian Yi.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m fast-tracking a year.’

‘Fast-tracking,’ Zhengxi said. ‘You don’t – you can’t _fast track_ the education system. It’s not a fucking _airport_.’

‘The enrolment guy at my school said I started high school already so they’d let me—’

‘You did two days, Jian Yi. Two. Not a year.’

That was true. He hadn’t really learnt anything except how the Byzantines used Greek fire to destroy the Arab sieges and what day they’d get their med check-up so maybe he could get a glimpse of Zhengxi’s dick again.

Jian Yi scratched at his scalp. The top part of his hair was tied back from his face, but he’d used the new band that had been on his wrist yesterday and now it was pulling the strands away from his scalp. ‘I’ve given you the easy answer, Zhengxi. You could still swallow it if you wanted to.’

Zhengxi blinked, and he lifted himself up so he sat facing him. Jian Yi felt a stab of fondness, because there was grass in his hair and he knew there would be, but his expression was hard.

‘You’re not being serious, Jian Yi,’ he said.

‘Am I that funny normally?’

‘Are you fucking _kidding_ me? You fucking _bribed_ a _school_?’

He Tian only looked vaguely interested – not in what he was saying, but how he was saying it, and Zhengxi seemed suddenly aware of the way things tended to echo around the quad.

‘It happens all the time, Zhengxi,’ Jian Yi said evenly.

‘No, it does _not_ ,’ Zhengxi said, a harsh whisper.

‘Li Yanyu? In Class D? Never got the grades. Her dad paid off our homeroom teacher to alter the register.’

Jian Yi remembered the girl, and how it had never come with much of a surprise. 

‘But that was _middle school_ ,’ Zhengxi insisted. ‘And this is  _high school_.’

Jian Yi didn’t tell him that he could have done it to the University’s professors if he’d want to, but that had seemed too much like cheating, and he realised he couldn’t do it when he knew that Zhengxi hadn’t gotten into Nanjing with money and threats. ‘So you admit that it’s a thing? That when I do it it’s wrong but when someone else does it’s fine because they were _younger_?’

Zhengxi was shaking his head. ‘I don’t get you. I want to. But I don’t.’

Jian Yi did not have to say how much it hurt to hear, because he knew that it had shown. A whole day of keeping the mask on, a whole day since he’d been back, and he knew it was beginning to crack. ‘Well, I’ll give you some time to get used to me,’ he said.

‘ _Jian Yi_ ,’ Zhengxi said, pleading, but not hard enough for it to mean much right then.

‘I need to call my mother,’ Jian Yi muttered, pulling himself to his feet, accidentally kicking He Tian in the head as he did. ‘Probably should let her know I’m alive after nearly three years.’

He Tian was glaring at him, but his look turned sly and amused at his words. ‘Hey, tell her my brother always asks after her. Wouldn’t mind getting her number.’

Jian Yi and Zhengxi both looked at him. ‘Fuck off, He Tian.’

* * *

They rode the metro back into the centre in silence. He Tian was busy trading looks with some girl sat opposite them, occasionally with a couple of hand gestures and raised eyebrows thrown in, and Zhengxi and Jian Yi sat either side of him with their arms folded and eyes looking somewhere at the windows, tunnels so dark that all they could see were their sullen expressions staring back at them until they had to look at the floor.

‘We should go to your place,’ He Tian said to Jian Yi, turning his head put not moving his eyes.

‘And do what? Stare at a bare wall?’

‘We could eat. Watch TV. My place is too far and Zhan’s is a fucking hobbit’s nest.’

Zhengxi grunted but didn’t make a comment. He knew it was small. But it was cheap, and close, and it had only ever been him. Or that’s what he’d thought.

‘There’s nothing there,’ Jian Yi said. ‘My mother sold everything.’

‘Then we go and buy you stuff. You’ve got money?’

‘I’ve got this,’ he said.

‘This’ turned out to be a slim black credit card that he pulled from the back pocket of his jeans, the same pair Zhengxi noticed he’d been wearing yesterday. It looked new and unused, and glossy like it would show his reflection if he looked close enough.

He Tian raised his eyebrows. ‘Unlimited?’ he said, already moving towards the doors of the compartment, the girl, apparently, forgotten.

‘I guess.’

‘ _I guess_ will do for now.’ He whacked them, not gently, on the shoulders, as an automated voice spoke out through the speakers. ‘Come on. We’re getting off.’

* * *

They bought a lot. At first Zhengxi thought it might be a couple of plates and maybe a chair or two, but eventually He Tian started to see the card limit as something of a challenge to be reached and Jian Yi seemed less and less interested with everything with every swipe. Zhengxi watched it all unfold, and could only count the numbers in his head, and let him spend a small fortune. The people in the stores didn’t blink at the three of them as the balances were totalled up, but Zhengxi could feel what they were thinking, looking at He Tian’s expensive watch and Jian Yi’s pale, almost elfin looks. Rich kids spending daddy’s money, just for the sheer hell of it. He didn’t know why it all made him so uncomfortable, what other people were thinking about him. He wondered perhaps if it was because Jian Yi didn’t seem to care, and he thought he should probably be consciously aware of other people for him.

It had occurred to him that perhaps the card was for expenses, and perhaps that what was paying for the new chenille throw that was going to drape across the back of Jian Yi’s new sofa was in fact bags of heroin and a shipload of automatic rifles. But he had chosen to opt for the idea that Jian Yi had in fact either come into a lot of money or that he was going to blissfully, uncautioned, enter a good few years of heavy debt.

Apparently He Tian knew someone that owed him a favour who knew a guy that was married to a woman whose brother owned a delivery-cum-set-up business, so by the time they got the late night metro back to Jian Yi’s house and he managed to find where he’d left the key (under the doormat of his neighbour who Jian Yi was apparently convinced had been lying dead in his apartment for eight years), the whole place looked like something he could call home.

 _Homes aren’t meant to be empty, Xixi_. 

He thought about Jian Yi’s words and thought that at least this place didn’t have empty boxes. Here the wires of the TV weren’t still tied up with those plaited pieces of black plastic, and the mirrors didn’t still have stickers over them ready to be peeled off. Here the kettle was already plugged in and not kept in the packaging and the sheets in the bedrooms smelled of the lit candles and not of a stranger’s hands and factory press machines.

‘This is nice,’ He Tian said, throwing his backpack on the floor. He stepped into the living area and fell into the sofa, boots on the coffee table.

Jian Yi didn’t say anything, so Zhengxi hit him on the side of the head for him.

‘I’m hungry,’ Jian Yi said, and Zhengxi already had his wallet in his hand.

‘I’ll go get us some food.’

‘No,’ Jian Yi said. ‘I want a takeaway.’

He Tian pulled a face. ‘Come on. Let’s do your new home some justice. It’s been too long a day flashing all that cash just to clog your arteries with shit.’

‘I’d like to clog my arteries with shit, thanks.’

Zhengxi pulled a face. ‘Can we stop talking about shoving shit in our veins?’

He Tian said, ‘I know someone who cooks for people in their house. It’s pretty useful when you want good food but can’t be bothered.’

‘People do that?’ Zhengxi said, moving to sit in one of the armchairs. He sank low in the cushion, which he supposed was an indicator of how much it had cost.

‘All the time,’ He Tian said, clicking through the channels on the TV. ‘It’s a great illusion of grandeur that you’ve got your own chef.’

‘I get the feeling that’s not why you do it,’ Jian Yi said, eyebrows raised. He was leaning against the island counter in the kitchen, surrounded by bar stools that he could have sat on but seemed content just to stand near.

 _He looks uncomfortable_ , Zhengxi thought. He wondered if it was because of him. What he’d said. He wondered if it was the place – the old familiarity of it, the new furniture filling the same space he used to say was so lonely. It unsettled him to think that it might not have been any of things, and that he didn’t know.

‘I’ll text him. Tell him to go to the supermarket on the way. What do you want?’

‘Tangbao,’ Jian Yi said. ‘And pidu noodles. And fried tofu.’

He Tian had his eyebrows raised, but his thumbs were moving across his phone as he wrote out a text to whoever was on the other end.

‘Anything else?’

‘Ask him if he knows how to make sticky mango rice. I had it on a beach in Thailand once.’

‘Zhan?’

‘I’ll have whatever you have.’

‘Sure,’ he said. He sent the text, slid his phone into his pocket, and finally found something on the TV to watch. ‘Ah, great film.’

‘What is it?’ Jian Yi said, moving over, just hovering at the back of the sofa. Zhengxi, from the armchair, didn’t move. He felt like Jian Yu was a deer, one glimpse or sudden move and he’d bolt into the way of oncoming traffic.

‘A group of rich, twenty-something undergrads from Britain just spend a load of money and fuck shit up. At the end they hire out a room in a restaurant and have a banquet and hire a prostitute, and just generally beat the shit out of the owner.’

Jian Yi didn’t blink. ‘Sounds awful.’

‘I suppose,’ He Tian said. ‘But I kind of like them for their awfulness. They just don’t care, you know? No matter what happens – no matter what they do to anyone or how much they hurt other people, they just do not give a _single_ fuck.’

Zhengxi felt every muscle ache, to stay still, because the longer He Tian spoke, the more he found himself wanting to look right at Jian Yi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149429320789/aphorism-v-a-19-days-fanfic


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149458306869/aphorism-vi-a-19-days-fanfic

‘I told you this isn’t my job, you dick. I don’t just turn up in an apron every time you beckon and throw money at me.’

‘Then why’d you come?’

A pause. ‘Because my head’s not so far up my ass that I can’t admit that I need the money. But I swear to god if this is one of those weird parties you’re throwing again I will leave and I will take your money and I will not be coming—’

‘It’s not. That was a… one-time thing. This is just a few old friends. You might know them.’

‘That sounds fucking ominous.’

‘Just come inside, all right? I’m not making you do anything you don’t want to.’

‘Sure you aren’t, He Tian. Because you’ve never done that before.’

Zhengxi waited as there was the rustle of paper grocery bags and some more cursing and finally the door edging open again.

They’d been halfway through the movie when the doorbell rang; He Tian was playing on his phone, sprawled over the sofa, feet kicking lazily, and then suddenly he _wasn’t_ , moving and fluid as a blur and the door was ajar and Jian Yi and Zhengxi could just about make out the furtive, muffled conversation that was going on behind it.

‘I thought this was a legit thing?’ Zhengxi said, looking at Jian Yi, wondering if somehow they’d been talking about food and menus and He Tian had taken that to mean something entirely different. Jian Yi was somehow curled in the other armchair across from him, limbs bent in such a way that they probably shouldn’t have been. Jian Yi shrugged at him, and his eyes only lifted marginally as He Tian let the guy in.

Zhengxi saw the hair, the mean expression, the cut eyebrows and the curl to his lip that perhaps was a natural reaction to uncertainties, and that was enough for him.

‘ _No fucking way_ ,’ he said, clambering to his feet. ‘Get the fuck out.’

‘Zhan—’

‘ _No_ , He Tian. No.’ He felt his hands forming fists, scar tissue tight across his knuckles. ‘Not him. All right?’

Redhead stepped forward, eyes narrowed, mouth already full of spite. ‘Er, sorry, but I’m guessing this isn’t _your_ place, which means I’m not doing jack shit that you tell me to do.’

‘You’re right,’ said Jian Yi. ‘It’s mine.’

Redhead seemed to recognise him then. Not in the way that most people would, just with a small parting of his lips, and raised brows.

‘Well, fuck,’ he said dumbly. ‘You’re not dead.’

‘That makes two of us,’ Jian Yi said. He pulled himself into a sitting position that made Zhengxi wince, all limbs and sharp bones that shouldn’t have worked like that. ‘Miss me?’

‘It wasn’t much of an _inconvenience_.’

‘Seems like it hasn’t been for many people,’ Jian Yi said.  

Zhengxi swallowed, and made to say something, but he was conscious of He Tian’s gaze on him like a fucking vulture, and Jian Yi was already up and moving.  

‘Did you get everything?’ he said, peering into the paper bags, face halfway in them – he always used to shove his nose into everything: magazines (Zhengxi’s magazines), books (Zhengxi’s books), food (Zhengxi’s food), like looking was never quite enough. Had to go the whole way, put his mark on everything with his hands and his eyes and his tongue. And if that wasn’t a euphemism for the way Zhengxi remembered him doing _everything_ , he wasn’t sure what else was.

‘Most. They’d run out of bamboo shoots.’

‘Shame,’ Jian Yi said.  

He led Redhead into the open kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers and showing him exactly where everything was like he’d cooked in there all his life, like everything wasn’t new and hadn’t built up a seasoning and still felt a bit sticky to the touch from the peeled-off labels.

It wasn’t long before oil started sizzling in the wok and Zhengxi could hear the rustle of the package for the pre-made dough – ‘I couldn’t fucking make everything from scratch, He Tian. I’m not a fucking _octopus_.’ – and the sound of knives hitting the board.

Zhengxi turned the film back on, and Jian Yi sprawled next to him on the sofa, shoving his feet in his face, and he would have been annoyed if he hadn’t been relieved.  

 _He has moods now_ , he thought, realising that maybe he wasn’t the same guy that used to put on a carefree front for everything – at least until he didn’t. That now he was made up of tiny complexities, like the tiny bone fractures that had to be made to build up muscle, and that maybe they were all different versions of him. All had to be handled in different ways; spoken to in different ways. Zhengxi wasn’t sure what to make of it, because he didn’t know if it was permanent, and he knew that Jian Yi must have still been tired and feeling a little out of sorts because he’d been training with the Chinese mafia for three years and only been back for a day?

 _Seriously?_ a small voice said. _I’m supposed to just accept that as a bare-faced truth? With no judgement or doubts? He could have been fucking his way around Europe for all I know._

But another voice told him that it made sense, really. And, probably, he mostly wished that it didn’t.  

* * *

‘The knives here are really sharp.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Like someone just bought them or never used them.’

‘You could say that.’

Guan Shan looked at him, then shrugged, and brushed past him to grab a handful of pak choi and other greens He Tian didn’t recognise.

Usually, He Tian tried to stay out of the way, because usually his touching anything led to burnt onions and too-salty broth and meat that was tough as chewing on rope. But he had a habit of lingering, however, of watching him work, so Guan Shan had to work _with_ that. This led to smacked hands more often than not and bruised hips trying to get out the way fast enough when he carried something across the kitchen and didn’t back off and this is fucking _boiling_ , He Tian!

‘What’s that?’ He Tian said.

Guan Shan followed his gaze. ‘Pork gelatine, idiot.’

‘And those?’

‘Black sesame seeds, _idiot_.’

‘Call me idiot one more time?’

‘Idi—’

In hindsight, it wasn’t the best thing to do in a place that was not yours to a guy who didn’t really like you much because you weren’t _nice_ to him, and another guy who seemed to have had too much to do with knives lately if the marks he’d caught glimpses of on his back when his shirt rode up were anything to go by.

But suddenly one of the knives was out of the block and against his throat, ringing with that thwing of metal against wood, and part of him thought it was _funny_ to see that kind of darkened panic sink behind Guan Shan’s eyes and for him to feel so still beneath his hands.

‘Get the fuck off me,’ Guan Shan muttered, eyes drawn down, not moving, not even putting up a fight. His hands weren’t even up, just clenched onto the edge of the counter except – oh. He was still holding the other knife. The bigger one, and the sharper one, he could probably get a least one good thrust into He Tian’s stomach or maybe his side before his throat stopped leaking blood.

He Tian stepped back, and tossed the knife onto the surface with a clatter, and didn’t look at him. He heard how Jian Yi and Zhan had stopped bickering and that the TV sort of seemed quieter now, didn’t it?

‘Show’s over,’ he said to them, back turned away from them, which meant he was facing Guan Shan.

He was slicing small bits of pork for the dumplings with the knife He Tian had had against his throat, like nothing _had_ happened. Nothing to say it had except for the small red line, just a pressure mark, against his throat.

‘I’m trying,’ he told him, which was an apology, and not a very good one. He shoved his hands in his pockets and played with the lighter in them, not quite sure what else to do. Moments like that always left him feeling like a bit of an idiot – the kind that began with a ‘c’.  

‘I’d appreciate a bit more effort,’ Guan Shan said, not looking at him, eyes down in concentration. His hands weren’t even shaking, not like they used to when He Tian started talking to him, when He Tian had barely done anything _but_ talk to him. Hadn’t taken liberties with him like he did now. ‘I’ll leave if you do that again.’

‘I won’t.’

‘That’s right, you won’t.’

The film was going again, and he heard them talking, and he moved closer to Guan Shan and ignored the way he tensed up.

‘He seems happy,’ he said, peering over his shoulder, taller than him by almost a foot, watching how his scarred hands moved with the knife in a rocking motion. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘What?’

‘Jian Yi,’ he said. His voice low so that it barely disturbed the dyed red hair above his pierced ears. ‘I thought he’d be all weird, but he seems fine. Given the circumstances.’

Guan Shan shrugged, glancing at the two of them on the sofa. ‘I guess?’ he said. He was pressing together the filled parcels of dough with precise, accurate movements that made He Tian think he wouldn’t have missed if he’d had to use the knife against him. Not that he was only realising that now. ‘I’d say you did as well but then you always seem weirdly happy.’

‘I do?’

‘Well. Happy like someone who just killed a cat they really hated kind of happy.’

He Tian blinked. ‘That’s a thing?’

‘You made it a thing. With your creepy ass smile.’

‘You think my smile’s creepy?’

‘Well. I mean. No. Not on a face like yours — but it could be.’

He Tian looked at him carefully, the sharp profile of his face, the shadow of his cut brows as they lowered in concentration, trying to focus on the meal he was preparing and He Tian’s persistent closeness and his questions.  

‘A face like mine?’ He Tian said.

Guan Shan let in a sharp breath, barely real, and it was all that He Tian had to go on and all he needed for something in his chest to feel funny. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘I’m just gonna – you’re an asshole, all right?’ 

He stepped backward so that if He Tian stayed put he’d be flush up against him, head on his shoulder, and though He Tian indulged in it just for a fleeting second, his vague outline a ghost against him, he moved back to let him put the tangbao in the steamer. The noodles were done and sat in a broth of greens and small pieces of pork, and the tofu was growing golden and crisp in the wok, fried with spring onions and some cooked chicken he’d said had been discounted.

‘Did you spit in the food?’  

He Tian glanced at Zhan as he wandered over, elbows resting on the counter, drawn over by the smell of cooked pork and steamed dough and heady, salty soup. The credits were rolling now and He Tian realised that he’d forgotten he liked the film after Guan Shan turned up. His eyes hadn’t even wandered over to the screen once, which was not surprising given that the redhead was always far more entertaining – far more interesting to him than any movie about privileged rich kids. (Was that because he was the antithesis to that – to He Tian? He wasn’t sure, but he wanted to think it was more than just the banality of class divisions.)

‘Doesn’t matter if I did,’ Guan Shan said, setting a timer on his phone. ‘You’ll eat what I fucking give you.’

‘You—’

‘Help me lay the table, Xixi?’ said Jian Yi, coming up behind him. He wore an easy smile but his eyes were hard in warning.

For a while Zhan didn’t say anything, didn’t move. He just stared at Guan Shan like he was aware they were in a kitchen where there were sharp knives and fridge doors and heavy-based pans and tea towels that might fit neatly around a purpling neck swollen with veins.

‘Sure,’ he said eventually, slowly. He didn’t turn his back as he moved away, and He Tian watched how Guan Shan didn’t quite let go of the wok handle when he’d finished serving up the tofu.

Jian Yi and Zhan grabbed bowls and plates from one of the cupboards, pretty things made of blue and white porcelain. They had not been inexpensive and Zhan made Jian Yi swill them out with water before putting them on the worn table between the kitchen and the living area, a huge oak thing that could have fit ten. He Tian almost felt a small spark of gratitude as Jian Yi lay places for four, not three.

When the tangbao were done, He Tian put them in their steaming baskets onto the table, and Guan Shan carried out the tofu and noodles and some more steamed greens and rice that he’d made as an afterthought.

‘I’m impressed,’ Jian Yi said, eyes wandering across the table as steam rose up around them and settled on the windows of the living room and kitchen, city lights blurred outside in the dark. He Tian realised that his stomach was panging in hunger.

Guan Shan just shrugged and didn’t look at Jian Yi as he sat down, an awkward movement that involved lots of jerks and stop-starts, like he was waiting for one of them to ask him what he was doing because he wasn’t actually going to _eat_ with them, was he? Like one of them was going to drag him out the door by the scruff of his neck and throw a few notes at him like he was some sort of seedy night service whose clients didn’t care about his own comfort. 

Guan Shan pressed his back against the seat with something of a sigh, like he’d _made_ it and he was in place and didn’t have to go anywhere, and as Jian Yi encouraged them all to eat with furtive hand gestures and an almost falsetto tone, He Tian squeezed his thigh.

Guan Shan’s leg jerked, knee smacking into the table, the jug of water and the soup that the noodles sat in wavering slightly, and He Tian raised an eyebrow.

‘Something wrong?’ he asked him, helping himself to the crispy tofu and some wilted greens.

‘You’re such a dick,’ Guan Shan muttered.

He Tian grinned, because yes he rather was, and Zhan was frowning as he chewed with a kind of stiff movement like he’d just had a tooth taken out, and Jian Yi looked bemused as he slurped his noodles messily and not at all quietly.

He Tian looked around the table, its sullen silences and the way they mostly ate like they were chewing rocks when they knew it was probably the best damned thing they’d had in their mouths for a while, and he thought that this was probably one of the most fucked up, testosterone-charged dinners he’d ever been to.

And god, he loved it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149458306869/aphorism-vi-a-19-days-fanfic


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149470733329/aphorism-vii-a-19-days-fanfic

He Tian walked him home, not for any other reason than that he wanted to, even if the reason he gave Guan Shan was different.

‘A twenty-year-old guy walking back to his apartment two miles away. At midnight. On your own. Because _that’s_ a good idea.’

‘I know how to win a knife fight, He Tian. I’m not some stupid green.’

‘No,’ He Tian said, jabbing him in the temple with his forefinger. ‘You’re red.’

‘Funny,’ Guan Shan muttered, rubbing his head.

‘I thought so.’

The streets were quiet, because it was a Wednesday, trickling with late night shoppers and people who were heading into the city for night shifts or a premature shot of something water-clear and burning down their throat.

Most people crossed the street when they saw them coming, He Tian’s quiet slink like he’d fallen into the shadows, Guan Shan’s red hair and his scowl that he never seemed to take off.

He Tian knew he did, though. Sometimes. When he wasn’t concentrating on how fucking _aware_ someone had to be to survive in a world like his, which was not, He Tian had come to understand, the same one that he lived in.

They cut through tight alleys where clothing hung over the railings of the banisters and the plants in their boxes looked more wilted as they went deeper, buildings almost leaning over to block out the clouded skies and the sun in the day. They passed through small parks that weren’t parks when they were made of concrete and overflowing rubbish bins, and, when they headed through the industrial estate near Guan Shan’s home, He Tian felt his hackles rising. The cars drove past them slower than they should, grim eyes peering out at them through blacked-out windows, and the lights were flickering around a swarm of mosquitoes. Really, it was no wonder Guan Shan was like he was.

‘Ever thought of moving?’ He Tian asked him, not for the first time, after someone rolled their window down as they passed and just looked at them for a good minute, car keeping pace with them, engine growling low, before He Tian flipped them the finger and they took off again, smoke seeping from the exhaust.

‘Sure. Pay for my ma’s medical bills and for our new place and we’ll be out of there tonight.’

‘Done,’ He Tian said.

‘Fuck off.’

‘I’m serious. I live in an empty four bedroom apartment. You could live with me for a while if you wanted. Until you stopped letting your pride get in the way of your welfare.’

His eyes, tawny under the lights, were shadowed and dark. ‘I’m not your charity case. I’m not something you can just play with when you fucking feel like it.’

‘You know that’s not what this is,’ He Tian said angrily. ‘You know I’d never think of you like that.’

‘Do I? Because one moment you’ve got a fucking knife to my throat and in the next—’

He was kissing him. Pressing his back against the ridged metal door of a container, hands in his hair, on his face, lower. He was gentle with him, always, because he wasn’t sixteen anymore and he knew the difference between what someone wanted and what they needed, and because he liked the way it always shocked Guan Shan that he was capable of it, and that it shocked himself that Guan Shan was capable of giving it back, no knocking of teeth, no searching, desperate war with their tongues.

It had been like that once, because they’d been arguing about something stupid and Guan Shan was always watching him which He Tian had taken as a stupid form of consent, and He Tian had realised that he’d never been kissed. And like a child, hands grubby and scrabbling, he had stolen it from him. Shoved his tongue down his throat until his eyes watered, until he’d pushed him off and given him bruises that he felt for weeks, and there was hurt in his eyes more than anything when he ran off. 

At the time, that’s what he’d thought kissing was. About taking, and claiming, and those were not foreign concepts to him now, but he liked to think he’d grown up a bit.

He remembered Guan Shan’s quietness after, the same sort of quietness he thought sometimes clouded Zhan when he’d seen him watching Jian Yi - then and now - and he remembered the guilt that had crept on him after he accepted that he had been wrong. He imagined someone doing that to him, putting a part of them inside him because they wanted to, because they thought they had a right, and it made him feel so _bad_ , and not in the way people talked lustily about Marvel villains and characters on TV. Ironically, when he imagined doing someone doing it now to Guan Shan, he saw red.

Guan Shan struggled at first, which was to say that he made a sound in his throat that made his dick hard, and put his hands on his shoulders like they were just resting there, but that was it, and it was not really any kind of attempt to push him away like they knew it could be.

Minutes passed. Hours? And all they could hear was the slow roll of cars tires that drove past, people who wouldn’t see them in the shadow of the metal containers that rose around them like trees, and the sound of tiny insects throwing themselves against the flickering lamplights.

‘Stop,’ Guan Shan said eventually, the word a breath, chest filling and emptying as he struggled to fill his lungs before He Tian would lean in again.

He Tian put his hands either side of his head, nails biting into the rusted metal. He leaned into him, too close, not letting Guan Shan think there was anything around him that was something other than him.

He said, low, ‘Don’t tell me this isn’t what you want.’

Guan Shan swallowed. ‘You never let me decide if it’s what I want.’

‘Bullshit,’ He Tian said, and he wiped his mouth in the shoulder of his t-shirt. ‘Take some responsibility for once, would you? It _might_ not kill you.’

He looked away. ‘Just move,’ he said quietly. ‘Please.’

He didn’t at first, because sometimes Guan Shan changed his mind. But this time he didn’t, just kept his eyes off him and clenched his jaw. His lips were red and swollen and made He Tian _want_ , but in the end he moved. He stalked off a little way, the orange of a cigarette blooming in the darkness like a flower unfurling, and shoved a hand in his pocket, lighter spinning between his fingers.

He looked at Guan Shan as he sucked at the end in a heady rush, eyes narrowed from the smoke.

‘I like cat and mouse games,’ he said, scratching his jaw with his thumb. ‘But it gets frustrating after a while.’

He flicked ash onto the ground, embers red and spark bright, before they faded to a muted grey that made them invisible.

 _What an apt fucking metaphor,_ he thought, feeling the way his heart had started to slow and the rush of it all was starting to leave him, and Guan Shan was just _standing_ there. Where was the kid that used to fight against him with everything? Used to sneer at his words and come to school wrapped in bandages that meant he’d won because he was there and still standing? Where was the person that used to lay ruined in his bed with bruises on his neck and between his thighs and would let his mouth fall open but would only open his eyes when He Tian asked him to?

 _Maybe he grew up_ , a voice said absently, and he thought about the number of times Guan Shan had mentioned his mother lately and never really seemed to expect nice things to happen to him, like sharing a meal with people who could be his friends. _Which probably says more about you._

‘I’m not messing with you on purpose,’ Guan Shan said. ‘You make me fucking confused.’

‘Then call it off.’

‘I _did_ , and you kept turning up and – and…’

‘And what, Guan Shan? You want to be friends? Is that?’

‘We can’t be friends,’ he said, amused but not really in the funny kind of way. He said _friends_ like he said _money_ , with a muted derision that never quite stamped out the envy and the imagining of what could have been. ‘You don’t _have_ friends.’

‘Really? Then who were they? What was all that about tonight?’

‘ _That_?’ He shook his head, and waved a hand in a vague motioning gesture. ‘ _That_ was you playing happy families. _That_ was you pretending like things have always been that way when you know you’ve never been anything but a fucking afterthought to them – not in middle school, and not now.’

He Tian knew that things only ever really hurt when they were true. He said, ‘And is that what I am to you?’ He’d forgotten about his cigarette, growing ashy between his fingers, and he ground it into the dusty path running between the containers with his boot. ‘Am I just an afterthought?’

For a while Guan Shan said nothing, and He Tian was quickly coming to decide that he didn’t want to hear anything he had to say, because if it took that long then he probably knew that answer.

But then he sighed, and ran his hand through his hair, just like he’d worn it since middle school, shaved at the sides, spiky and shorn on top. It used to make him look kind of petulant back then, like he was trying a bit too hard to create some sort of image he was trying to present of himself. One that maybe matched what other people thought of him and what he _wanted_ them to think of him. But now it made him look oddly severe, the angles of his face sharper, the shadows that settled in between them darker.

He looked at He Tian, and he wasn’t scowling, and He Tian remembered just how beautiful he could look sometimes.

‘You can’t be an afterthought,’ he said, ‘when you’re the only thing I think about.’

* * *

Zhengxi left not long after Redhead and He Tian. He lingered for a bit, and helped him stack the dishwasher and clear the table, and then the apartment felt empty again and looked like no one had ever been there except for the small imprint of bodies on the sofa, and the lingering smell of fried tofu, and he said that he was leaving.

Jian Yi asked him to stay, which was not easy to do, but he said no.

‘Have to go to class tomorrow,’ he’d said. ‘Some people have lives that aren’t about credit cards and how much money you can spend before you start to feel something.’

That wasn’t fair, because he knew what he felt – that he felt something – and it was loneliness, and fear, and uncertainty, and he didn’t get why he had to say that for it to mean something. Why he had to give him an excuse that might be enough to make him stay.

In the end Jian Yi had said nothing, and watched him from the doorway, watched how he opened his mouth like he wanted to say something and then closed it like he’d thought better.

‘I’ll see you,’ Zhengxi had said.

‘Sure,’ Jian Yi said, and didn’t ask when that would be, and wondered why it felt like it would be never.

He locked the door when Zhengxi left, and turned off the lights, so that when he stood by the window in the living room the only lights were murky hotel signs that blinked in the summer heat, and streetlamps whose orange glow was hot and hazy. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, watching the cars slip through the roads like animals burrowing their way through tunnels, and looked at the airplanes that were taking off and flew low enough over the skyscrapers that for a moment the glass walls of the buildings were lit up with the plane’s headlights.

The air conditioning in the apartment was cold, so eventually Jian Yi grabbed his duvet from the bedroom and brought it to the sofa, because he could smell Zhengxi there and thought that might make him fall asleep like the thought of it had done for the past two or more years.

But tonight he couldn’t, and his eyes weren’t sore, and he felt uncomfortable in his skin, and the sofa was _too_ comfortable. He reached for his phone on the coffee table, fingers scrabbling to catch it before it slid off the edge, and when he lit up the screen it told him starkly that it was 2:53 AM.

He scrolled through a few blogs he’d followed over the years, people who were travelling around the world and people who were stay-at-home parents who ran craft blogs and kept journals; people who worked at animal shelters and ran fundraisers and people who updated when they found free internet in a café or library and let someone know they were still alive.

His favourite (maybe not favourite but resonant, at least) was a girl, who was not much younger than him, who had been in love with her friend for a while, and had done all but told her, and wasn’t sure how. That week she’d written that they went to an aquarium, and she had told her friend that it was beautiful while she was looking at her, and her friend had only agreed and stared through the glass of the tank at the brightly coloured fish.

Jian Yi scrolled to the comment section. There were a few people who told her to stick with it, to be patient. One who said to give up, and another who told her she was sinful. Another few who told her just to be honest with her.

Jian Yi sighed, and started typing.

> _JY here_   _(the guy that always says he’s been where you are)._
> 
> _There’s not much fun in it, and you’ll hurt, and it doesn’t get much better. Unlike you, my friend knew how I felt not long after I’d realised my own feelings, but it took a long while for him to understand, which is another challenge in itself._
> 
> _You can be honest with her if you’d like, like some people are saying, or you can be patient and wait, like others are saying. But I think you need to ask yourself: Am I being honest with myself? Am I being fair? Am I happy?_
> 
> _If you answer those questions and you think they sound right, then whatever step you take next will probably be easy, but I think you might be unsettled by them. I was. Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe it’s worth it to keep doing what you’re doing, even if you know you realise that you’re sadder than you are anything else, because maybe she’ll love you back – maybe she does._
> 
> _But this is about you more than it will ever be about them, and I’ve seen that in your posts. I’ve come back to an old friend recently, because I thought it would make me happy. I did things, and made promises to get here, and now I’m wondering it that was right, and I think the fact that I’m asking it says that it probably wasn’t. Maybe not because they weren’t enough of a cause for me, which they always will be, but because sometimes putting yourself through other things can never quite be justified when really its for someone else._
> 
> _I can’t give you a straight answer. I can’t tell you what to do. But my advice is to search for some honest answers from yourself for once before you start asking them from some dumb people on the internet._
> 
> _Sincerely,_
> 
> _JY (Another dumb person on the internet.)_

He posted it, and then thought he’d probably been harsh, but that it didn’t matter what someone like him said, because she was probably going through something that felt far more _unfair_ at the moment than anything he could have said.

He shut his eyes for a bit afterwards, and then his phone buzzed in his palm. Jian Yi blinked, and realised that some time must have passed, because it was nearly four when he unlocked it.

A text from Zhengxi, he saw, and let his eyes focus while he opened it.

> I’M SORRY FOR BEING SUCH A DICK TODAY.

Jian Yi tilted his head, wondering if he’d pressed Caps Lock by mistake. 

> I’VE NEVER BEEN VERY GOOD AT CHANGE, OR SURPRISES, OR SHOCKS – OR ANTYHING THAT I SHOULD PROBABLY ACCEPT MIGHT MAKE ME A BETTER PERSON EVENTUALLY. YOU KNOW THAT. I’M SORRY I LEFT YOU ALONE TONIGHT, AND THAT I’M ONLY REALISING NOW WHEN THE SUN’S COMING UP THAT I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE STAYED EVEN IF I DIDN’T WANT TO.

Another text slid below.

> NO. THAT’S NOT RIGHT. I DID WANT TO, BUT MAYBE THE ‘WANTING TO’ WAS WHAT MADE ME LEAVE. IF THAT MAKES SENSE.

_Ding_.

> PROBABLY NOT. BUT BASICALLY I’M SORRY. AND WHEN I SAID ‘SEE YOU’ I MEANT I’LL SEE YOU LATER BECAUSE I’LL BRING TAKEOUT TO YOURS (FUCK WHAT HE TIAN SAYS) AND YOU CAN TELL ME HOW YOUR FIRST DAY OF HIGHSCHOOL WENT (EVEN IF IT’S TECHNICALLY YOUR THIRD).

_Ding_.

> SORRY IF I WOKE YOU AS WELL. AND I’M GLAD YOU’RE NOT DEAF.

_Ding._

> * DEAD.

_Ding._

> (BUT I’M GLAD YOU’RE NOT DEAF, TOO. I’D LEARN TO SIGN IF YOU WERE BUT I’M NOT SURE IT WOULD TRANSLATE SO WELL WHEN I TELL YOU YOU’RE A DUMB SHIT.)

And the last one, after that, was a little picture that at first Jian Yi couldn’t make out, and when he squinted his eyes he realised that it was a monkey with its hands over its mouth.

He thought about asking what it meant, but he didn’t, and he thought about having to go to school in four hours, but not for long, because he was crying. Which, huh, he hadn’t done in a while.  

He drew up the girl’s blog again, and started writing another comment on the end of his last one.

> _Ps._ _I said that sometimes it will hurt, and sometimes it will, but sometimes that hurt will feel like the best kind of happiness you’ve ever felt, which is why you stay complacent and don’t ask yourself the questions_ _you need to, and that will probably hurt more._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149470733329/aphorism-vii-a-19-days-fanfic


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149518161844/aphorism-viii-a-19-days-fanfic

‘You bought a dog.’

‘There was a shelter by my school. She looked sad.’

‘You can’t just _buy_ a dog.’

‘Evidently you can.’

‘Do you even know how to look after something like that? You can barely look after yourself.’

‘Food and water and walks twice a day. Maybe a bath every now and again.’

‘Are you talking about yourself or the dog?’

Jian Yi ignored that and said, ‘It’ll be easy. We’re gonna be great together.’

Zhengxi frowned. He looked at the dog, a black thing with alert, pointed ears that Jian Yi said was called a Labrashepherd and that Zhengxi had thought was Jian Yi trying to speak German. It was chewing on a soft toy Jian Yi said he’d bought in IKEA that looked like a turnip, and it had already ripped off the washing instruction label and was starting on the tufts of green fabric that sprouted out the top.

‘Are you even allowed dogs here?’

Jian Yi shrugged. ‘Never seen the landlord. Landlady. Whoever.’

‘It’ll be in your contract—’

‘I really don’t care, Zhengxi.’

Zhengxi sighed, and started pulling plastic tubs of food out of the bag. The dog was watching him, starting to drool at the smell of braised pork belly and congee with century eggs and black bean chicken and knife beans stir-fried with ginger and probably too much chilli.

Jian Yi grabbed bowls and chopsticks and they ate on the sofa in front of the TV, indulging in the MSG and the saltiness of the pork and the burning heat of the knife beans, watching a documentary about jewel thieves and con artists in the 80s.

‘Mine,’ Zhengxi said. The dog had its head on the sofa, staring at him, and he clutched his bowl closer to his chest. He noticed the patches of fur missing on its ear, the way the tail looked shorter than it probably should have been, the slight thinness around its torso.

‘You’re mean,’ Jian Yi said. He pulled a piece of pork from his bowl and, leaning across Zhengxi so he had a face full of hair that smelled of vanilla shampoo, he let the dog wrap its mouth carefully around his fingers to take it.

‘Has it been tested?’ Zhengxi said dubiously.

‘ _Her_ name is Abel.’

‘Wasn’t he the guy that killed his brother in the Bible?’

‘Names don’t always have to mean something and have shitty connotations or whatever.’

Zhengxi rolled his eyes at his defensive tone.

Jian Yi had been like it since he got to the apartment. All day he’d been sending Zhengxi texts and pictures with captions like, ‘Doesn’t this look familiar!! #wishingyouwerehere’ and selfies of him in his already crinkled uniform and the dull classrooms and what he ate for lunch – some sort of curry with bread and a bunch of grapes – and the names of his classmates that he thought were funny – he said his favourites were Bao Shuang or Cai Futong.

It had been funny, and Zhangxi had felt a pang with each message as he tried to pay attention to his lecturer, watching his own messages from last night slide higher and higher up until he wouldn’t see them without scrolling.

And now, the day drawing in with a grey haze of smog and thick, back in Jian Yi’s apartment, he was sullen and sharp and defensive about _everything_ , even if Zhengxi felt himself being more critical than usual, and he couldn’t quite keep up with it. Was it about what he’d say yesterday? About him not feeling anything? Something about the bribes he’d had made?

‘Did something happen at school?’ he asked, and he gave Abel a piece of his chicken as a way of saying _There. I can be nice too._ She didn’t snatch it, teeth careful not to catch on his fingers, and he stroked her behind her ears when she put her head on his knee. He wondered where she’d been before, where she’d gotten the scratches and the marks on her and why her black coat wasn’t gossamer like it probably could be, and what it was that Jian Yi saw in her that he probably saw in himself.

He hoped it wasn’t that he was sad, too.

‘What do you mean?’ Jian Yi said, eyes on the screen, chewing slowly. One of the presenters was learning how a con group had forged notes in the millions, and Jian Yi watched it like he was learning from it, memorising it, wearing an intensity about the set of his shoulders and the unwavering of his eyes. He used to wear it at school, a look that always made Zhengxi think he’d be a pretty good person to copy his homework from, and made him wonder more what it would be like for Jian Yi to look at him that way.

‘You’re being weird with me,’ Zhengxi said, shrugging, reaching into the plastic tubs on the table for some another piece of braised pork. ‘You haven’t even told me how it was other than coming up with theories about the sex lives of your classmates and, not that it’s not fascinating, but you haven’t said what the lessons were like. If you remember anything from school. If you found it okay. If you made any friends.’

‘It’s high school, Xixi. Speculating about everyone else is the only interesting thing to do.’

‘That’s not true. If it was you wouldn’t bother going back.’

Jian Yi smiled at him, dry. ‘Sure,’ he said.

Maybe he didn’t mean to sound quite so mocking, but god he _did_. A sort of ‘let’s go with that, Zhengxi’, a ‘you probably can’t really handle Real Things from me anymore, so let’s pretend you’re right’. It made Zhengxi angry, that this is what they were now. Hidden words and assumptions and the darkness of the unsaid.

They used to do that anyway, because Zhengxi would see Jian Yi watching him when he thought he wasn’t looking or when Jian Yi thought he was sleeping, the ghost of a hand reaching out for his. And Jian Yi would say ‘I’m fine’ a lot when Zhengxi knew he was struggling, and say ‘If…’ and not say anything else because he thought he was ready to ask but not quite yet.

The difference now, maybe, was that Zhengxi didn’t think the _real_ reason was one he actually wanted to hear. The difference was that he didn’t entirely know what lay hidden behind the words, when at least he used to have a glimpse of them back then, like looking into the shattered fragments of a mirror.

He wondered if maybe it was because he hadn’t been there. Because Jian Yi had gone through school and gone through half the life he’d lived already thinking that all the rest of it would be spent with Zhengxi. How many times had he talked about going to high school with him? To university? Going to work with him? Being so grossly dependent on their friendship and not considering the possibility of anything else.

Zhengxi had to ask himself what he thought of that, if he thought he might have been happy now, knowing that they’d diverged a little, at last, because he thought as he’d gotten older that he might have needed some breathing room. But Jian Yi was still quiet and he wasn’t jumping on him like he used to, always touching and shoving and so damned _physical_ all the time like it was the only way he knew how to communicate, and the change was just nothing but jarring and disassociating.

‘It’s your first day, Jian Yi. You’re older than them, and we’re not dumb enough to pretend that some things haven’t happened. You know stuff like this takes some getting used to.’

‘What was high school like for you?’ Jian Yi asked. It might have been a diversion but at least he sounded generally interested. On the TV, the presenter was heading into a tunnel where some thieves had hidden bags of stolen gems on an old train, voice echoing around the air that looked muggy and cold somewhere near the mountains, the light growing smaller and smaller until it was just a pinprick behind her.

‘It’s highschool, Jian Yi,’ Zhengxi said, Jian Yi’s words echoing back to him. ‘Speculating about everyone else is the only interesting thing to do.’

‘You’re a dick,’ Jian Yi said, but at least it came with a smile, and Zhengxi felt a little warmer. He shrugged.

‘It was fine,’ he said. ‘Weird, at first, because you weren’t there. I spent a lot of time looking and then waiting and I don’t think either of them were very good for someone who evidently couldn’t be found.’

‘But you still looked.’

‘I did,’ Zhengxi said. ‘The lessons were actually easier than I thought, maybe because you weren’t putting chewing gum behind my ear or throwing pencil sharpenings at me or some other dumb shit in class.’

‘I refuse to take responsibility,’ Jian Yi said. He was leaning over and scratching Abel’s face, making stupid noises at her that made her tail wag and smack into Zhengxi’s shin every time that he felt with a wince.

‘Sure,’ Zhengxi said. ‘I liked the science lessons. I did a lot of work for the teachers in the Physics department – just admin work and shit. They helped sponsor my applications to Nanjing.’

‘What was History like?’

‘It was okay,’ he said, because he knew Jian Yi had always liked History, especially the stuff about battles and big betrayals in ancient politics and shit, and he wouldn’t like it if he admitted that it was boring and he’d skipped most of the classes.

‘And He Tian?’

‘He Tian was not, as much as he might have liked it, a subject on the curriculum.’

‘I meant how did he find it, idiot.’

Zhengxi had to think. ‘He wasn’t there much,’ he said, rememerbing. ‘Which was kind of weird considering all the teachers in middle school thought he was a star pupil even if he was a manipulative asshole even to his homeroom teacher.’

‘Where was he?’

‘Don’t know. He never said. I think he was pretty upset that you were gone. Or maybe not upset. Does He Tian ever get upset?’ He shrugged. ‘We hung out a couple of times, played basketball, watched a movie, but he was always your friend so… it felt weird.’

‘And Red?’

‘Oh, he was there.’

Zhengxi wondered how much Jian Yi must have wanted to know all this when he was _away_ (he refused to call it anything else). How often did he just want to know that everyone was okay? Or not even that – just to know what they were having for breakfast or if they had homework or what they were doing on the weekends or on a Wednesday night at 4 AM. Zhengxi remembered that it was Jian Yi so he probably thought about weird stuff too like what their boxers were and if they’d jacked off lately and how many times they’d taken a shit that week.

‘You sound like you want to say something else about him.’

Zhengxi frowned. He set his bowl on the floor, let Abel eat the rest of his food even if she probably shouldn’t (Jian Yi wanted her, kept her cooped up in an apartment; he could deal with the aftermath) and even if it was Jian Yi’s chinaware she was slobbering over.

‘He got involved with some bad shit. I don’t know the full story. There was a lot of gang activity and someone said that Red’s dad had been involved at one point.’

‘Was it serious?’

‘I think so. I heard there was a knife fight in a part of town and a couple people died. A turf war or something. I don’t know if Red was there, but he had to do community service for most of his second year.’

‘Is that why you didn’t want him here?’ Jian Yi said. ‘Because at first I thought it was about the thing in middle school, before I remembered you saying you felt sorry for him.’

‘I heard he was involved with some dealers. Maybe not now, and I don’t know if _he_ was the one dealing anything, but I know he was involved with that in high school. I don’t like that stuff.’

‘Drugs are everywhere, Zhengxi,’ Jian Yi said. ‘Every city, every continent.’

‘Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about letting someone who deals them into my – into _your_ place.’

‘You keep saying you don’t know if he was, so really you don’t know. You can’t make that sort of judgment against someone. That’s not fair.’

Zhengxi sighed. ‘I know,’ he said. He Tian had said the same. Or, at least, whenever Zhengxi had mentioned it he’d just shrugged and said it ‘wasn’t his business’. He wasn’t stupid, though, and he knew how much it bothered He Tian that some guy he was obsessed with was going to end up getting himself killed.

Jian Yi looked hesitant. ‘Are they like…?’

‘A thing?’

‘Yeah. They seemed awfully cosy yesterday.’

‘I haven’t wanted to ask. You know what He Tian’s like. You know enough about Red to know what he’s like.’

‘I always thought after he pulled that stunt in front of the school that Red would end up killing He Tian in his sleep or something.’

‘I think there was more going on that we realised,’ Zhengxi said, quiet, thinking about when Jian Yi had done that to him. In front of his sister. Not to be cruel, like He Tian probably had, hand wrapped around Red’s throat like he wasn’t going to let him get a chance to breathe.

He’d done it on a mad, panicked impulse, letting out a shout that was like a battle cry ancient warriors unleashed for courage. At first Zhengxi thought that he’d never once had the idea of doing something so brutal to retaliate as knifing Jian Yi in his bed (he’d be pliant and soft and probably wouldn’t even wake), but then he remembered the times that he’d hit him, because Jian Yi got too close, and he thought back on it with shame.

 _Haven’t you been doing the same sorts of things to each other since he came back?_ a part of him asked quietly. _Hurting each other to take the place of the confusion? Only this time you’ve grown up a bit so you know how to use your words more than your fists._

Zhengxi didn’t listen, and maybe he should have.

After a while they carried on watching TV, picking at the food that was left in the tubs with their hands, fingers greasy, and Jian Yi did his homework and asked questions every five seconds that made Zhengxi think about how _opposite_ everything was. He got up, when Jian Yi was almost done and the old 1930s version of _Frankenstein_ was about to start, and headed to the kitchen to grab a glass of water and his laptop to write up some lecture notes.

He paused, when he heard a sound, and looked towards the door where a side table stood against the wall, scattered with empty photo albums and candles and a bowl of potpourri. Jian Yi’s schoolbag and shoes had been thrown against the base of it, and Zhengxi realised what had happened.  

‘Uh, Jian Yi?’

‘Yeah?’ he said, not lifting his head from an exercise book.

If Zhengxi had turned his head he would have thought about how _young_ he looked, but instead he was busy laughing and trying to smother it with a hand.

He said, ‘I’m pretty sure Abel just took a shit on your school bag.’

Jian Yi swore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149518161844/aphorism-viii-a-19-days-fanfic


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149529555644/aphorism-ix-a-19-days-fanfic

Mo Guan Shan lived in an apartment complex in the outskirts of Nanjing city. It seemed to mostly be made of broken glass and cigarette ends, and the nights were always louder and harsher than the days. Sometimes people spray-painted the walls with words that, when he grew up, he understood were swear words and gang names, and when he was younger he thought they were art.

The lift was usually broken so he had to carry his mother and her chair up and down the eighteen flights of stairs to their apartment, and it was always with some shame that he set her back in the armchair in the living room. Like the rest of it, it was grubby and had yellow-stained walls from years of his old man’s cigarettes. The balcony door had been smashed some while ago by a burglar that had climbed across the terraces (the fancy word his ma said they estate agent called them when she and his old man first looked around) and was still held together by black electrical tape. It got cold in the winter, because none of the doors shut properly, and because the tape had holes in it, and Guan Shan had to give his ma his duvet because she got cold when she couldn’t move herself to keep warm.

The walls were thin and pounded at night when his neighbours were fucking the bed into the plaster or having a party where the smell of weed gave him a headache. Sometimes, if he had the money, he’d take him and his ma to a motel where nothing was really different except they were closer to the ground and everything was a bit quieter and he and his ma each got a double bed to sleep in. Not that Guan Shan needed it; he slept on his side and didn’t move – his ma used to check on him in the night when he was younger because she thought he wasn’t breathing – and his profile was wiry enough that he didn’t even fill a quarter of it.

Guan Shan wished he didn’t hate his home, except that he did, because he saw only in it all that he hated about himself, and all that he had failed. The paint he couldn’t afford to buy, the extra blankets that were scratchy as wire scourers, the cupboards that were bare and had probably never been full.

His parents had said the place wasn’t much different when they’d moved in. The blinds were still stained over the windows, the beaded strings broken so they had to be rolled up by hand, and the scratched wooden floor never quite got clean, but the kitchen had always been hot and full and smoke had risen from it like his old man was performing a magic trick.

‘I’ve got a defrosted pack of braising steak, tinned tomatoes, and a handful of root veg.’ His old man would have the ingredients out in the kitchen that was not more than the size of the motel double beds, cigarette dangling from his lips – he had somehow perfect the art of talking around it, and puffing from it without having to use his hands.

And when Guan Shan got home from school he would make something out of it, pretending that this was some sort of skill for survival. Some sort of ‘just in case’ test, and not one that actually just gave the reality that they’d use what they had or they wouldn’t eat at all.

It was not, after all this, the place for guests, when it was not even the place for the people that had to live in it. But the difference between the two was that some chose to come, and some had to stay, and Guan Shan couldn’t ever understand why anyone would choose to come _there_.

So when the doorbell rang, at first, he ignored it.

When it rang the second time, he came into the living area. His ma was pressing some dying flowers he’d bought her a few days ago for a few yen, the florist shouting out his usual spiel that ‘everything must go!’ which Guan Shan thought was never much of a selling point.

‘You expecting someone, Shan?’

‘No, ma,’ he said glancing at the door. They kept the blinds down over the window because when the sun managed to break through the grey fug of summer cloud the room would feel like a furnace, and because it stopped anyone from peering in. ‘Huai from book club?’

She shook her head, dark spiky hair bobbing around her round face. ‘We’re meeting at her home next Monday.’

That meant Guan Shan would have to take her across the city, which he didn’t mind, but he didn’t like the way the woman would let her lip curl up every time she opened the door and saw him there behind his ma’s wheelchair, or every time she’d come to their house and sit there with a bottle of sanitiser on the table like it was the only clean thing in the room.

Probably true, but Guan Shan had ruined most of the nerves in his hand from bleach if not from fighting, and he knew that at least his home was cleaner than the woman’s mouth.

The doorbell rang again, and then the knocking was hard but not impolite, and Guan Shan sighed.

‘I’ll get it,’ he muttered.

He ran a hand through his short hair as he pulled it open, and when he did he blinked and his mind went sort of static. He thought about shutting it again, but he didn’t want to have to lie to his ma.

‘What are you doing here?’ he said dumbly.

He Tian gave him a weird little wave, and pressed a bouquet of flowers against his chest. They were pretty and wrapped in more layers of brown paper and cellophane and tissue and ribbon than they should have been. It made the ones he’d given his ma look like weeds he’d found creeping through the cracks of the building in comparison.

‘I brought these,’ he said, shoving them against him harder so that he thought the stems might split and Guan Shan had to grab them.

‘You brought me flowers.’

He Tian gritted his teeth. He wasn’t smiling like he used to, the sharp thing that could be leering and dangerous and sometimes wide and charming, depending on who he flashed it to. Guan Shan got a mix of the two, and sometimes something else that he didn’t quite know. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, tight and covering the impossible length of him, white shirt tucked in and open at the collar and making him look pretty severe – pretty _clean_ given the backdrop of rusted balconies that smelled of piss and cigarettes.

‘They’re for your mother, idiot.’

Guan Shan paused. ‘You came here to bring my _ma_ flowers?’

‘You said she liked them once.’

He had. Hadn’t ever really thought that He Tian might be listening. He wondered what else he’d talked about and probably hadn’t meant to because he thought he wasn’t interested enough.

‘She likes them so she can press them,’ he told him. ‘They’ll just die if we keep them in here.’ It got too hot there in the summer, even with the windows open, sometimes leaving the front door open too if Guan Shan was home and had a blade in his back pocket, and the air just didn’t feel clean enough to let something so pretty sit there and wilt and suffocate.

‘Do what you want with them,’ He Tian said, shrugging, blasé enough to say that he didn’t want Guan Shan to think he cared _that_ fucking much about the softness of the petals or what someone did with them afterwards. It was like he’d made the gesture, and the transaction was complete, and he didn’t have to keep up the civility once he’d kept up his end of the bargain.

‘Okay,’ Guan Shan said slowly. ‘Now what are you _actually_ here for? ‘Cause I don’t think you came here just for… this.’

He Tian shifted, irritable. ‘I came here to talk to you,’ He Tian said, maybe too loudly or too hard, because he’d never been as patient as he let on, and the sound of it made Guan Shan shake with timid nerves.

He Tian smiling and charming and leery made him nervous at the best of times, too _full_ of him, but this kind of He Tian was too quiet and sharp and he wasn’t used to this one much. It always led to his head being filled with words and promises he could never quite trust and a swollen mouth that made his heart ache for more.

‘How many doors did you knock on before you got here?’

‘Like, fifteen?’

‘How many fuck you’s did you get?’

‘Like fifteen.’

Guan Shan nodded, because that was normal. ‘I’d invite you in but—’

‘Can I come in?’ He Tian interrupted, knowing if he got there first (if he’d won), if he asked the question before Guan Shan could give the excuse, that he could not really deny He Tian anything.

He hesitated at the door, the whole thing filled by He Tian’s stupidly tall frame. Even as a kid he’d towered over him, and it would make him feel small even if his words and his looks didn’t.

‘You shouldn’t really… be here.’

‘Awkward,’ He Tian said. ‘I kind of am.’

‘Guan Shan? Who is it?’

He closed his eyes at the sound of his ma’s voice. Curious, a little wary, a little excited too because they had visitors and why would anyone want to visit _them_?

‘Come in,’ he muttered, and watched as He Tian hid a smile behind his hand, pretending to scratch his nose, sliding his shoes off in the small dip of the doorway.

‘Ma, this is He Tian,’ he said, when He Tian stood next to him in the room.  ‘He Tian, my mother.’

He watched as He Tian bowed and handed her the flowers – taking them with a laughable gentleness from Guan Shan’s grip because maybe he didn’t actually think his ma would _be_ there. He watched as he switched into that persona he must have cultivated somewhere between grade school and middle school, learning quickly that people liked other people that smiled and were polite and laughed at your jokes even if they weren’t funny and said your name with probably too much respect when they spoke to you and made you feel _special_. He’d learnt the difference between the person he knew he was and the one he knew had to be sometimes, which Guan Shan had never learned, and never thought he should have to.

Guan Shan used to watch him in middle school, joking with the guys on the basketball team, leaning back his chair when he talked to the girls in the classroom so a bit of his shirt rode up and showed the V of his hips, like that wasn’t a conscious mistake and he could shrug his shoulders and say ‘whoops’ as he tugged it back down with a smile like a secret.

And then he watched him in high school, how he’d smile slow and small at the teachers when they asked him a question and see the way they’d gone a little red and cleared their throat as he answered in a voice that was low and made for night. The students weren’t on his level anymore. Didn’t hold much of an interest or a challenge because he’d won them over and probably already alienated them with this thing that he was.

Guan Shan had realised with such torturous irony that He Tian had set himself on such a pedestal as he grew into his looks and his height and everything that was him, that in doing so he’d set himself apart. No longer the ‘one of them’ that was a little bit better, the one who understood, the one who cared. He was above them in a way that was not pretentious but didn’t fully liken them to him either, didn’t make him feel like they could go to him with his problems and ask if he wanted to be on their team. A step too far, and suddenly he could never fall back.

Guan Shan used to watch him, wondering how no one else saw what he saw, and he wondered what would happen if he’d been one of them – one of the people he chose to show his ‘other’ to. Would he get flustered, and starry-eyed, and feel special because someone like him was smiling at someone like _him_?

He knew, whatever question he was trying to ask himself, that the answer was no. No in every way. At least he hoped so.

After He Tian had complimented his ma probably too many times and sent her into a flustered tizzy and found out all about her book club and her flower pressing and the fondness she had for landscaping, he nudged him in the side and gave him a look.

‘Right,’ He Tian said, blinking like he was coming up for air, had to take a moment to remember that it wasn’t quite him who’d just been there. ‘If you don’t mind, _ayi_ , I wanted to speak with Guan Shan for a moment.’

‘Of course,’ his ma said, and maybe he was a little disappointed that she’d accepted him so quickly and didn’t see the other one that lurked in him, and maybe he was a little jealous too, because he could never have been that kind of person that maybe would have made the bitch from book club smile at him when he knocked on her door.

His ma offered to make them some tea but he just said they were going to sit in his room, because her chair didn’t fit in the kitchen – useless around the apartment that was too small for anyone to even walk around – and because they’d run out of tea a few days ago which she would then realise was why Guan Shan had only been bringing her water when he cooked their meals.

He shut the bedroom door behind them when they were in his room, watched as He Tian looked around, sitting on his bed and making it look so much smaller than he already was. He was rubbing the back of his neck, which he rarely did, because it meant that something was slipping that he didn’t have control over.

‘Your mother is very nice,’ He Tian commented mildly, like he was remarking about the pressing heat or the colour of his bedsheets. They were white and blue, and they matched the curtains drawn across his window that pulled the room into darkness, and there was nothing else in there but a few stacked boxes where he kept his clothes, and a pile of books on the floor in the corner that he said he’d read for high school but had never even touched, unsure, now, if he wished he had.

‘She likes you already,’ Guan Shan said, leaning against his closed door, arms folded. He could feel his face pulled into a smile that felt too natural at the moment.

‘Hm,’ He Tian said. ‘I didn’t realise… I know you mentioned she needed medicine but I didn’t know that she…’

‘That she can’t walk? You can say it, you know.’

‘Sorry.’

Guan Shan rolled his eyes, because he said it too much without meaning it that it didn’t mean much now.

‘Most people don’t know. It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘I think it means a lot.’

‘How’d you figure that then?’

‘Because it makes her dependent on you. It means that, given your circumstances, you become the parent while she becomes the child.’

Guan Shan stared at him. ‘Circumstances,’ he said. He didn’t get scared anymore that their eyes might meet. He _wanted_ He Tian to see that he was angry. ‘You’re a piece of shit, you know that?’

He Tian sighed. ‘Look, I didn’t come here to argue with you. Again. Like always.’

‘This is new,’ he muttered, and watched as He Tian became something that could only be described as uncomfortable.

Maybe it was because of what he was about to say, and the truth it carried with it, but Guan Shan knew that it was probably about him. About his mother. About his home. Because He Tian knew it wasn’t nice when he’d walked him home to the entrance of the complex all the times before, but he probably hadn’t known that ‘wasn’t nice’ was probably a perverse glorification now that he _saw_ it, sat in it. Now that the pieces were starting to be put into place and Guan Shan was maybe starting to make some more _sense_ to him.

Poverty, as it was wont to do, made the rich rather uncomfortable when they were put in the middle of it.

‘I came here to apologise,’ He Tian said. His fingers were running over Guan Shan’s bed sheets and he found himself watching them more than listening to his words that instantly disinterested him. ‘For what I did the other day at Jian Yi’s. For what I did that night. I shouldn’t have, because I shouldn’t still be apologising for behavioural shit at this age. I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learnt since we were fifteen and I’m wondering if it was much.’

Guan Shan didn’t do anything but blink. ‘Anything else?’ he said.

‘Yeah. I’m sorry for not getting how things were, and for assuming… Shit, I don’t know. For not really seeing things clearly. I owe you more than that. I never know how to show it, but I do. I’m sorry for being such a fuck-up sometimes. And. Yeah. I’m sorry, and I want to do better, and want you to think I’m better and know that I can treat you better and be someone that you’d want to be with. Someone that doesn’t make you confused about whether you want to be with them. I fuck about with you because I like you, if it’s not obvious, but like, I don’t want to keep fucking around anymore. I don’t want you to think that’s all this is. And I’m sorry that I know I’ve made you feel that way.’

Guan Shan cleared his throat. ‘Are you done?’ he said.

He Tian let go of the sheets and his fists were clenched. ‘What?’

‘I mean you came here to, like, repent or some shit didn’t you? ‘Cause maybe you thought that if you just blurted it all out I’d just stand here and say that it was fine. You don’t just – you don’t just apologise and everything goes away, He Tian.’

He Tian stared at him. Whatever he had been expecting, it was clearly not this, and maybe that said something about what He Tian thought of Guan Shan if he thought that apologies meant something to him when they were just words and words didn’t _mean_ anything. He couldn’t _do_ anything with his sorry’s.

He said this to He Tian.

‘If my words aren’t good enough, then what do you want?’ He Tian said. ‘My offer still stands. About the place. My uncle’s not back in China for a few years still with his contract. I can help you with your mother’s medicine. Help you get something sorted out.’

‘Are you fucking kidding me.’

He Tian was frowning now, and _good_ , because maybe he was actually fucking thinking about why he was angry.

‘I’m offering you help and you’re telling me to fuck off.’

‘Give the man a prize.’

‘I don’t get you,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I think I’m fucking complex and then I look at you and…’ He shook his head, but didn’t look away. ‘You know more about me than most people even if I haven’t told them. You know about my brother and my dad and about me. We’ve… _done_ shit that you won’t let us talk about sometimes and you’re acting like I’m walking up to you off the street and giving you a fucking lottery ticket because I think you could do with new clothes—’

‘Are you for _real_ —’

‘And that’s _not_ what this is. You’re not a fucking charity case. I know that.’

‘Then stop fucking treating me like one!’ he shouted. ‘Stop trying to just throw money at me and my ma because you know that’ll get me under your thumb and put me in fucking _debt_ to you!’ He swallowed, and lowered his voice, teeth clenching achingly in his jaw. His ma would hear him anyway, but he had a bit of respect. ‘This isn’t about you apologising, or trying to atone. This is always about _you_ and how much _power_ and _control_ you can get over someone who doesn’t act like you always want them to. Because the _second_ you throw some objectively useless shit at them like money then you’ve got them.’

He said, quieter again, ‘I wish you hadn’t come here. We could have carried on fucking each other up and we wouldn’t have been happy but that probably would be enough.’ He let his lips twist. ‘But hey, you _get me_ now. You see who I _am_ ‘cause you’ve seen where I live and that my ma can’t get down the stairs without me carrying her. So, according to you, not being happy would be enough for someone like me, wouldn’t it?’

He Tian held his hands up. ‘Fuck this. I’m done.’

‘Nice apology. Needs some work.’

‘You’re so fucking stupid sometimes,’ He Tian said, pushing past him, opening the door. He didn’t even look at Guan Shan’s mother, wide-eyed and pale, as he headed for the front door. ‘Call me up when you smooth out the fucking crater in your shoulder.’

When he heard the door shut, not too hard but very final, he sat on the bed where He Tian had been and put his head in his hands.

‘Guan Shan?’

He looked up. His ma was there, and he hated the look she wore on his face. It was the kind of look she used to wear when his old man came home. Sometimes he’d heard him crying and his ma shushing him like a he was a baby. Sometimes he’d smoke until it seeped beneath Guan Shan’s door and maybe he’d shout but not really, just in frustration, and go out and stand on the balcony to cool off.

 _I’m not going anywhere, Ma_ , he wanted to tell her. _Please don’t look at me like you used to look at dad._

‘Sorry for shouting,’ he said.

Her expression didn’t soften. The flowers lay in her lap. ‘What do you want me to do with these?’ she said.

Guan Shan sighed. ‘Let me put them in some water,’ he said, rising to his feet.

‘No. I asked what you wanted me to do with them.’

Guan Shan looked at her, how she looked kind of hard and set behind the concern. It was the kind of look he thought was startlingly unique to mothers, in its fierceness.

‘I want you to do what you want with them,’ he said. ‘I just want you to be happy.’

‘My happiness is yours, Shan,’ she told him.

Guan Shan rubbed his eyes. He just wanted her to take charge and not let him be an adult that had to make stupid adult decisions anymore. Why couldn’t she let him be thirteen and stupid again? Not that he was much smarter now.

_Given your circumstances, you become the parent while she becomes the child._

He heard the words, and wanted to punch something, but instead he thought about breathing and the feeling of air filling his lungs and how good the expanse felt.

‘I’ll put them in a vase,’ he said at last. ‘It would be a shame to throw them away.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149529555644/aphorism-ix-a-19-days-fanfic


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149562022584/aphorism-x-a-19-days-fanfic

He Tian’s brother liked the coffee place they went to because apparently the raspberry lattes were the best in Nanjing.

He ordered the same thing every time he came there: mixed berry waffles and a pot of coffee to get him wired, and sometimes a sweet millet congee mix with coconut and raisins that He Tian didn’t want to admit looked pretty good.

His brother liked the coffee place because inside it was dark and industrial and none of the furniture matched and there were books in the bookshelves and board games under the tables and the WiFi was always good for replying to emails. The staff were pretty slow and not always friendly but He Tian and his brother both shared the trait in common of not giving a shit about how _nice_ people were.

He’d text his brother yesterday on the way back from Guan Shan’s while his hands were still shaking and his bones were aching with a tension that meant he was probably going to do something stupid.

As usual, the reply came quickly, and He Tian knew his brother was probably busy then and for the next three months but if he wanted he could meet He Tian now?

‘That’s cute,’ Guan Shan would have said, maybe not being as derisive as he wanted it to sound. ‘Always drops everything for his kid brother.’

And He Tian probably would have _tsk_ ed and jabbed him with his elbow and then maybe kissed the skin of his throat as an afterthought.

But: No, He Tian had told his brother. Now wasn’t a good time. Now was too much too soon because god had he really gotten things _so wrong_? He felt cold, and he felt untouched, which was not what he thought he would be. He thought maybe Guan Shan’s face would have softened for a second because maybe he caught the sincerity in the whole thing that for once was not an _act_ and he was not _playing_. He’d meant it. Every word of it. Even the things that weren’t kind, after Guan Shan had started shouting at him and had probably never wanted to listen to what he had to say anyway.

Maybe it was the ‘sorry’, because he said that too much and with not enough conviction. Maybe he should have just stopped apologising for something that was proving too difficult to change.

‘Are you going to talk or just glare at your toast?’ his brother said.

He Tian gritted his teeth, looking up at him. He was sipping coffee and scrolling through emails on his phone. He was wearing his suit because, sometime in the last two years, things had gotten kind of _serious_ for him (his words, not He Tian’s), and it was rare that he wore anything else.

‘I didn’t want to talk to you at all if I could help it.’

‘ _Wow_ , Tian Ti. Keep making me feel better for putting off a merger meeting for you. You’re doing a great job.’

But his brother didn’t get up, and leave, like he had before when He Tian knew he was being bratty and kind of vile and his brother would end up sending him a text afterwards saying _Is everything really okay?_ and He Tian would feel more like shit than he had before.

He used to hate his brother, which he saw now was probably resentment. Because his father thought he wandered through life a bit better than He Tian had ever done, seeing in him a kind of clarity and honesty and an ethic that He Tian had never had. His father was one of the few people who used to see through his bullshit and used to clench his jaw at dinner because He Tian would be grinning and it wasn’t real and his father didn’t like that. His father, really, didn’t like much.

‘I need a job,’ He Tian said. He stabbed at his French toast with a knife, pushing it around the plate. It was soaked in syrup and some sort of compote and probably wouldn’t be good cold or reheated but He Tian didn’t feel like eating right then.

‘A job.’

‘That’s what I said, didn’t I?’

‘Well sometimes you say one thing and mean another, so I had to be sure.’

‘Whatever.’

His brother had put his phone on the table, faced down – he was being _serious_ now – and swallowed another mouthful of coffee as he looked at He Tian. His hair was still wet from his shower, brushed through with the fingers of his hands, and he was wearing an old t-shirt and jeans and a grey bomber jacket, and it was fucking _hot_ outside, the kind of end-of-summer heat that was thick and pressing and waiting to break in an autumn storm, but he didn’t feel like having his skin exposed too much today when he still felt kind of raw.

‘You want a job with the company or…?’

‘Yeah. Wouldn’t be asking you otherwise, would I?’

‘I’m just gathering facts here, Tian Ti. No need to be such a shit.’

He Tian leered at him, and popped an ice cube in his mouth from his iced coffee that made his tongue burn and his teeth ache as he chewed on it.

‘You want to do what I do or work in the offices?’

‘You’re telling me you’re not an office bitch?’

‘We all wear suits now, Tian Ti. I just know how not to get mine dirty.’

The company changed when his brother got his promotion, because the papers used to say how they looked like they were part of the Triad in all their black get-up and how they were probably just fronting as a security company and the finance auditors were always _very_ interested in them. Too interested in them.

Funny what a suit could do. How it increased the clientele. How it made the papers struggle to get a hold on you anymore because you’d started looking the part. His father always said that bribery and manipulation was only a last resort, and He Tian had wondered if this image alteration counted as that. He wondered why, when he changed how he looked and who he was sometimes, that that was _wrong_ , but when his brother did it to the whole fucking company it was good and he a gold star and more responsibility. He Tian had never wanted to scream _That’s not fair_ more.

So, yeah. Used to hate him. Watched his father choose and make preferences when everyone knew parents weren’t supposed to _have_ favourites. He used to speculate as a kid that maybe his father had an affair and the woman dumped him on his doorstep and expected him just to ‘deal’ with him, but his mother loved him too much for him to think that with any real conviction, and that had always been her fault.

Now, he was older. Now he saw that, god, his brother actually _was_ as capable as he came across, and that it wasn’t a pretence like He Tian usually made it seem. In his mind, his brother was the real, solid stone block, and He Tian was the cardboard cut-out of it.

‘I’ll have to ask Dad,’ his brother said. ‘He’s still the CEO—’

‘Forget I asked,’ He Tian muttered. He didn’t want him to run to his father so he could say, ‘Look! He’s trying hard at this for once!’ and for his dad just to shrug and maybe send him a text that told him not to fuck it up.

‘Is this about money?’

‘What?’

‘Do you need money?’

‘What?’ he said again. Hadn’t even thought someone might ask him that and believe it. ‘No. No, I’m fine.’

‘But you don’t want me to tell Dad.’

‘You know what he’s like.’

His brother stared at him. Really, he had the face of a hard son of a bitch, and concern didn’t sit quite right on his face. He wasn’t angled in the same way He Tian was, cheek bones high and something about him that could look feminine if he tried. His brother was a square jaw and a broad forehead and wide nose, flat planes that didn’t hold shadows in the same way as He Tian’s.

‘I won’t tell Dad if you tell me what this is really about.’

 _Of course,_ He Tian thought. Because half his business was about trade and negotiation and getting what he wanted while making it seem like the other party were getting what they wanted to as well.

‘And don’t lie to me,’ his brother added, cutting into his waffles. ‘You know I don’t like that.’

It wasn’t that he didn’t _like_ it. It was that he knew lies too well, how they were structured in the sentence, stumbling around a lack of conjunctions, how they were followed and preceded by certain words, how someone’s face might do something that told him everything and how someone’s voice could hitch. He Tian knew he found it a boring part of the human condition, and that he just didn’t have time for it.

‘I’m bored,’ he said, shrugging, and technically this wasn’t a lie. ‘I need something to do.’

‘Thought you said you were starting up your own venture?’

‘I wasn’t really into it,’ he said vaguely.

It had been a fragmentary idea that he’d had when he finished high school. Couldn’t do the university thing, even if his teachers stumbled over themselves to sponsor him and write him recommendations. They’d tell how it was _such a shame_ that he didn’t have the ambition to go, that he was one of their best students. He knew that last one wasn’t true, because his grades had never been much above average out of sheer boredom and apathy, but he knew they felt compelled to say it and maybe part of them wanted to believe it to complete the picture of him they had.

‘And is this about anything else? Someone else? Something you’re trying to prove?’

He Tian narrowed his eyes. ‘What?’

‘Because I don’t employ people because they’re on some self-determining mission or journey of self-discovery. I don’t do that. Go work in a bookstore and daydream and shit if that’s what you want.’

‘That’s not what this is about.’

His brother leaned forward, plate pushed aside now he was finished, elbows on the table and hands interlocked like he was about to start a sermon.

‘You sure? Because I’ve been waiting for you to bring up the redhead kid’s name and you haven’t.’

He Tian’s mind short-circuited. Just for a second. ‘What the fuck,’ he said, feeling like he was burning now, and shoved his jacket off.

‘You think I don’t keep tabs on you?’

He Tian gritted his teeth at the words, at the total indefensiveness of it. He wasn’t even fucking apologetic. Didn’t, like some people, admit the things he’d done wrong with a grimace and something that made him seem contrite. ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ He Tian told him.

‘Sure, I should,’ he said. ‘You don’t reply to my texts for weeks and I see you when you want something. Like I’m not going to look into the people you spend your time with.’

‘Are you trying to tell me something here? Tell me I shouldn’t be hanging out with him like I’m fucking sixteen?’

‘No,’ his brother said. He leaned back, drank the rest of his coffee. ‘You’re not fucking sixteen. And you wouldn’t listen to me anyway.’ He sighed. ‘And I don’t want you to hate me. And… the kid’s been involved with some shit but he’s not bad. World hasn’t been fair is all.’

He Tian bit his lip. ‘Does Dad know?’

‘Of course not,’ his brother said. His brows were lowered. ‘He wouldn’t…’

He Tian knew what his father _wouldn’t_ if he found out. Wouldn’t keep up the allowance, wouldn’t put him in his will. Maybe might have even written a letter to the local council just to let him know what kind of people were in the city and he was just being a good citizen in _informing_ them of He Tian’s activities. Maybe not even because it was spite, but because it was what he thought.

He remembered coming home from middle school, back then. One of the guys from the company’s Data Intelligence department had shown his father a picture of him kissing Guan Shan in front of the school – some kid had taken a picture on their phone and put it on the internet before it got taken down – and the only thing that didn’t make him as angry as it should and kick him out was that Guan Shan had been crying and He Tian’s hand had been around his throat. Because humiliating someone else was okay if it was to put them in their place. But one guy kissing another guy because he _wanted_ to was not.

‘I wouldn’t do that to you,’ his brother said. ‘You can do – you can be who you want.’

‘Even if I’m the cause of the break in our society’s infrastructure?’

His brother rolled his eyes. ‘That’s bullshit, and you know it,’ he said, except that some local official had said it and it had been quoted in newspapers and across the web that morning and a lot of people had agreed – heads nodding as they thumbed through the papers, typing out comments at the bottom of news sites and blogs. Sure, not everyone believed it, but He Tian knew that some other official would never get airtime on TV if they attacked the guy’s statement, and probably wouldn’t be in the public eye much longer if he did.

‘I don’t want to talk about this anymore,’ He Tian muttered eventually, eyes down, turning the thick metal ring on his thumb. ‘About him.’

‘But I’m right? You’re doing this for him. To prove something to him?’

‘It’s none of your business.’

He realised, after, that he should have just told him to fuck off. Said no. The lack of attack, in hindsight, said only that he was right.

Proved he wanted this so Guan Shan might think he was normal. That he had ambition and not just his uncle’s fancy apartment and his car and his father’s money. That he could hold a job, and that he was worth something, that he could keep him around because he was a normal contributor to society, who had an income that was taxed cleanly by the government.

That he wasn’t offering him help because it was disposable cash and an innate rich-boy mentality that throwing money at things would fix things. It was because he was growing up, and saw that he was hurting, and that he wanted to help him, and that if Guan Shan wanted he could pay him back one day, because that’s how adults did things. They loaned and borrowed and claimed and all that shit that wasn’t just the one percent’s method of _giving_ and thereby controlling. Not like how Guan Shan had seen thing happened in the city, at school, in between everything else. Maybe it didn’t make sense, and maybe it wouldn’t even come to anything, but he was clutching anything now that would stop him from doing something _bad_. _Never seeing him again_ kind of bad.

He Tian’s brother said he’d see what he could, which He Tian knew was a lot because he was pretty well-adjusted and pretty well-established, and he ordered another pot of coffee from a waitress who passed and said, ‘Sure’ with a kind of shrug like she probably wouldn’t remember but he’d have to wait and see.

‘What are you working on?’ He Tian said eventually. Sometimes his brother would forget that he was sitting with people when he started really _going_ for it on his phone, thumbs darting across the keys and a furrow between his brows like everything was a problem that needed fixing.

‘Can’t tell you that, Tian Ti,’ he said.

‘Not even if I started a job?’

‘Even then. Each client has the confidentiality of the handler.’

He Tian shrugged. He picked at his French toast with a fork. It was soggy and cold now, but it was teeth-aching sweet and he kind of liked it.

He bit his lip. ‘When you were dating Chee-hwa… Did you, like, fight a lot?’

‘Not really,’ his brother said. He still didn’t look at him, but He Tian was kind of glad of that, that he treated nothing He Tian said like it was too surprising or concerning. Maybe he just pretended, but it put him at ease. In high school he’d asked Zhan Zhengxi a few things, but Zhan had always gone red-faced and kind of embarrassed about shit like sex and relationships and stuff that wasn’t basketball and comic books. ‘Sometimes we did, but nothing too _serious_.’

‘Why’d you break up then?’ he asked, as the waitress came over and put the coffee down a little too hard and cleared the plates.

‘Work,’ he said easily, like it didn’t really bother him too much, either because Chee-hwa hadn’t meant much to him, or his work had always meant more.

‘But you were nice to each other? When you were dating?’

‘Sure. The sex was good. We did things for each other that was nice. Went out for dinner; cooked for each other. Went away at the weekends. You know.’

‘Sure,’ He Tian said, shrugging. ‘I know.’

He didn’t ask anything more – thought that might give him away. His youth. His occasional cruelty. The way he didn’t really know what normal was.

Half an hour later, when his brother asked for the bill and pulled on his blazer, He Tian paused.

‘If you’ve been keeping surveillance on me, you’d know that Jian Yi was back,’ he said.

His brother just thumbed through the notes in his wallet and put a stack on the table. If there was anything he was better at than He Tian, it was learning how to not to show things. Unlike He Tian, he didn’t replace it with something else like he was actually feeling something else, he just went kind of blank.

‘Did you know?’ He Tian said, carefully, watching him.

‘I didn’t,’ his brother said. They passed the main counter on the way out and he ordered a raspberry latte to go. He took a sip at his pink drink, in his suit, and said, ‘So his mother’s around then?’

He Tian rolled his eyes. ‘You’re such a whore. She’s like forty.’

‘Thirty-six, actually. Six-year gap. I’ve had older women.’

‘You’ve _had_ them. That’s nice.’

His brother flipped him off with a finger, and He Tian did the same. It was an easy thing to do, a catch-all gesture.

‘Enjoy your latte, Barbie,’ he told his brother, heading out on the street. It was late morning and it was the city centre so it was busy but not heaving, and he had to pull on a pair of sunglasses against the brightness. ‘Thanks for the chat.’

His brother gave him something like a smile, and a car pulled up in front of them, sleek and black with dark windows. The driver got out, suited, opened the door, and his brother slid into the back seat, rolling the window down when it shut. ‘Anytime,’ he said. ‘And don’t be a stranger, Ah-Tian.’

‘Sure,’ He Tian said, feeling a kind of pang every time they parted, because he knew it was always his fault that they didn’t see each other. Not that he forgot. He just… didn’t. ‘Don’t forget about the job.’

‘I won’t,’ his brother said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

He Tian nodded, and the car rolled away into the city somewhere, growling low, and he stood there, for too long, and heard a crack of thunder, until eventually his skin was soaked, because it had started to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149562022584/aphorism-x-a-19-days-fanfic


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149578591824/aphorism-xi

Zhengxi was aware, halfway through a seminar, that he still had some pretty big questions to ask himself. The realisation happened after the seminar, in fact, but it was there that he thought things had probably started. Again.

It had been raining all day, hammering against the panes of the small room, lights low so they felt like they were in a cocoon. The professor was the kind of guy that treated seminars as a lecture, not as a seminar, where students should have done the reading and maybe worked through a paper and this was finally their chance to discuss it and talk about their issues.

‘You can come to my office hours for that,’ the professor had said in another seminar they’d had a few weeks ago, and the students had sat in sullen silence since. He was young, and apparently had just had a collaborative book published, and maybe he was enthusiastic about his subject, but Zhengxi just thought he was a bit of a dick that liked talking more than he was willing to listen.

He was talking about extra-terrestrial life and the reliability of the Drake Equation, when Zhengxi felt his phone buzz. He glanced at the professor, staring at the projector screen behind him as he spoke, and at the other people in the class, sitting around the table, making notes or doodles on the work they’d prepared somewhat uselessly for the lesson. Some were looking further down, at the phones they held under the table, quick furtive glances cast back up at the professor every now and again.

Zhengxi pulled his phone from his pocket, and almost wanted to roll his eyes at the name that had popped up on the screen.

He remembered in high school, waiting for years for that name to reappear. Just once. Just something to say that he was okay, that he was alive, and now Zhengxi couldn’t fucking get rid of him. Not, he thought quickly, that he wanted to. Couldn’t stand if the silence fell again between them. Didn’t think he could take another round of it after the first time.

He’d realised, after Jian Yi left – got taken, kidnapped, _whatever_ – that he’d spent more time than he realised with him. Recalled all the times that he’d been sitting in class or on a bench while Jian Yi spoke to other people, laughed with other people, and he did nothing. The girls in high school admitted that they’d liked that about him, how taciturn he was, but he didn’t like that in himself afterwards, because it meant he was kind of ruined when Jian Yi wasn’t actually there anymore.

He sighed to himself, small and quiet, and snorted when he pulled up the text.

_Xixi! What’s the quotient rule? Teacher’s about to ask me to go to the board…_

Zhengxi typed out a quick response, trying to keep it basic even if it wasn’t, half-thinking to himself that Jian Yi should have known.

After a few more minutes another text came through.

_Thanks, Xixi! Love having a maths freak handy._

_I’M NOT A MATHS FREAK_ , he typed back.

_Kind of are._

_YOU TRY GETTING THROUGH ONE OF MY ASTRONOMY LECTURES WITHOUT KNOWING HALF THE STUFF I HAVE TO._

_Sure, let’s swap places for the day._

_LIKE YOU’D SURVIVE. YOU’D MAKE ME HOLD YOUR HAND ALL DAY._

_Wouldn’t *that* be a shame._

Zhengxi frowned, and his fingers hovered the keys, and he didn’t know what to say. He realised that it was quiet, and when he looked up the students were looking at him with that kind of second-hand embarrassment that also said too deeply that they were glad they weren’t him.

He looked at the professor, face burning, and the guy had an eyebrow raised.

‘My apologies,’ he said, sliding his phone back in his pocket. He grabbed a pen to make it look like now he was focused and ready to learn and the professor just shrugged and carried on with the lesson, and Zhengxi did not look at his phone again no matter how many times it buzzed against his thigh.

When it finished, and the rain had eased up, the professor asked to speak with him, and the girl he had his next class with said she’d wait outside.

He shoved his folder into his bag and waited as the professor shut down his computer and turned the projector off, before leaning against his chair and looking at him with a weird kind of smile.

‘I can’t help but notice that you’ve been distracted in my classes lately.’

Zhengxi bowed his head. ‘I’m sorry, Chua Jiaoshou,’ he said. ‘It won’t happen again.’

‘I always thought apologies like that were kind of redundant, don’t you think?’ he said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and waited like his question hadn’t actually been fucking _rhetorical_. Then he sighed, and his shoulders curved in a bit, and he stopped looking at Zhengxi who was looking at him like he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say but he could give him the right one if he wanted it that bad. ‘Look. I just think it would be a shame for someone with your enthusiasm to let it fall elsewhere.’

‘It’s not,’ Zhengxi said. ‘I’m not.’

‘Really?’

‘I’m committed to my work,’ Zhengxi said, couldn’t help the defensive tone that crept in, because of course answering a fucking text in his seminar didn’t wipe out all that he’d worked for to get here. ‘I’m committed to this university.’

‘Okay,’ the guy said, and he shrugged. ‘I won’t push. Just keep your work at the standard it always is. You’re a great student. You could do great things.’

‘I will.’ 

‘And if you do need help, seriously, do come and see me in my office hours. I know it’s easy to slip and lose focus and not know how to get back on track.’

‘I appreciate that. But honestly. It’s not necessary.’

The guy shrugged again and thanked him for staying behind and Zhengxi headed back into the hallway, feeling kind of weird.

Pei Mao Lu was waiting for when he shut the door, like she said she would, and together they headed to their next class. It was across campus in a cluster of newer buildings where most of the tech equipment was kept. 

Mao Lu was a tall girl with a wide mouth and always wore red lipstick that looked kind of hastily put on. Like the rest of her really, black tights snagged and skirt stained with toothpaste, shirt buttons sewn on with the wrong coloured thread.

He didn’t really like her much, because she talked loud like it was a competition, and sometimes she ate half a sandwich on the walk to their class and never ate with her mouth shut. Neither did Jian Yi, and neither did anyone else he really knew, and Jian Yi had said he was stupid for finding it annoying, but for some reason it grated him when she did it.

‘What was that about?’ she asked, taking a swig of her water bottle that she kept clipped to her handbag.

‘Me being distracted or some shit,’ he muttered.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘The profs do that _all_ the time. It’s like a kind of _cover your ass_ clause, if you know what I mean. Means that they can say they tried to help you if they have to expel you.’

‘Thanks, Mao Lu.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Who?’

‘The girl you’re seeing.’

‘Sorry?’ he said. He pulled the zip on his jacket up, because in the past few weeks autumn had suddenly slipped in and the clouds were still a grey so dark they were purple as bruises. The grass was wet around campus, and the air lingered with that cloying acidic petrichor that people always romanticised and said was their favourite smell in online Q&As.

‘The one you’re always on your phone to,’ she said, a kind of annoyance in her tone that said she thought he was stupid, and not in the same way the Zhengxi called Jian Yi a dumb shit sometimes.

‘He’s not a girl,’ he told her. ‘He’s a friend from middle school. He moved back to Ning recently.’

She looked at him strangely. ‘That’s weird.’

‘Why?’

‘Well you get messages from him and you do that oh-my-girlfriend-is-so-cute look.’

‘What?’

‘It’s true,’ she said, nodding, unwrapping a manufactured sweet bun that had been coated in sugar and dyed pink with food colouring.

‘It’s not true,’ he said. ‘And no, I don’t. He’s just – he’s just an idiot.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘What?’ he said again, annoyed at the kind of tone she had, annoyed that she was eating again and he could see the pink mush of the bun macerated between her teeth.

‘Nothing. I’m just saying. You should be careful with that around here.’ She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and smeared her lipstick more.

‘Careful with what?’

‘The university doesn’t really like… _you know._ ’

‘Not really.’

‘They’re funny about people like you.’

‘People like me.’

‘Yeah. I know universities are supposed to be progressive and shit, but just be careful.’

Zhengxi realised what she was saying, not because of her words, but because of the way she said them. Like she was imparting some great secret upon him and he should probably be thankful, like the forbidenness of it all was maybe a bit _exciting_.

He stopped, and said, ‘ _You_ are what is wrong with this country sometimes.’

‘Zhengxi—’

‘Is this about the university or are you using them to hide your own prejudices? Because the latter is exactly what it seems like.’

‘I’m just _saying_ , Zhengxi. No harm intended or whatever.’

‘Fuck off.’

She sighed, held her hands up, nail paint chipped and worn and made her seem kind of trashy, and didn’t seem particularly offended. ‘Look. Do what you want, fuck who you want. Just don’t be surprised if it bites you in the ass.’

When she’d said this she’d started walking, and looked at him like she didn’t understand why he wasn’t following. After he clenched his jaw and just stared at her, she let out a overzealous sigh and headed off towards the science buildings without him.

He knew he should have gone to class, because he knew the lecturer was strict with attendance and sent snotty emails to the students that didn’t turn up, and because he had more pride than to let Mao Lu’s words mean anything and let his anger mean something too, but instead he stood there while students and staff and visitors walked around him and he sent a text.

He shouldn’t have asked him to skip – didn’t want to encourage that kind of thing. But Jian Yi was technically older than him and knew what he was doing and he was old enough to say no if he really wanted to. But Zhengxi also knew that by sending it Jian Yi no longer had a choice, because of course he’d flunk school if he meant he got to spend a second of totally solicited time with him.

* * *

The headquarters’ of He Tian’s father’s company was based in one of the tallest skyscrapers in Nanjing. It was tall and made of glass that seemed to build its own sun, and the shape of it was like a twisted rope. Every time he went there someone was hanging from scaffolding to clean the windows or picking up the litany of dead birds that had been tricked by the sky and its reflection.

It used to be the building of an auditing company, before it turned out that they were getting paid by the people they were auditing and were shut down for fraud. So when He Tian’s brother changed the working attire for most of his colleagues he also bought a skyscraper to complete the image. Like they did the same thing.

Inside, the reception was startling in its starkness and everyone wore black and white and He Tian thought they were probably trying too hard except that he was a little impressed by the uniformity of it all.

He gave his name at the main desk and the woman behind the computer, hair scraped back off her face into a glossy pony tail, cheekbones slightly gaunt and eyes sharp, and she told him to take a seat.

He did, flicking through copies of the _China Economic Daily_ and something on interior design, knowing that the men and women that sat around him, there for meetings and interviews and inspections, were watching him and wondering what he was there for like he was the new inmate at a prison.

He felt some small satisfaction when his brother strolled out and they sat straighter in their seats and watched as he gripped He Tian’s shoulder and called him ‘Brother’. He felt their eyes on them to the elevators, and asked if he’d done it on purpose.

‘Of course,’ his brother said, and that gave him some small satisfaction too.

They went to one of the higher floors of the sixty-floor building, and walked out into a long room that was filled with computers and small curved compartments that were probably called pods. The tables and the half-walls that surrounded them were a glossy white, the floor dark and glassy so that you could see into the floor below you but not very well, just a suggestion of people moving about like shadows beneath the surface of the ocean.

Each desk had three computer screens and a laptop, two shelves on the side walls, and a printer. Most of the desks were empty, but it was early, sun still rising before it beamed full and bright through the windows, and his brother told him that a lot of the people that worked on that floor spent their time in the other offices in Shanghai or Beijing or were ‘out in the field’.

‘This is where you’ll be working,’ his brother said, bringing him to a desk that looked exactly like the others if only a little more bare. There was a jade plant next to his computer, which he hadn’t seen on the others, but he had no photo frames and only a few company-made pens with the logo on and the mug on his desk was ceramic and white and was not printed with a funny joke.

‘Okay,’ He Tian said. He sat in the chair, turned the monitor and the PC unit on, and entered his log-in details that his brother passed him on a small card and told him to shred afterwards.

‘You’ll report to me because it’s easier. We use Lyra in the office to send quick messages between each other, but these are screened so don’t be an idiot, and let me know if you have a question or when you’re done.’

‘Great,’ He Tian said. ‘Going to enlighten me about what you want me to do now?’

His brother leaned over his shoulder and moved the mouse so the cursor blinked on a file on his dektop. ‘This PDF shows you how to bypass certain databases and how to navigate them in a way that will optimise your results.’

‘Bypass?’ He Tian said.

‘Navigate,’ his brother said, voice stern. ‘Everything is completely legal here.’

‘Of course it is,’ He Tian said. 

Sometimes he wondered if it bothered him that his family had made their fortune in doing the ‘clean’ work of organised crime, the searching, the surveillance, the logistics behind the whole thing. He knew now that it wasn’t like that, not as it had been in the 60s as the Cold War was really starting to settle in, and that now they were more of a privatised investigation company that provide assistance to the police but mostly to anyone for pretty much anything, so long as they had the money. Like Harrods.

He Tian’s brother sighed and handed him the manila folder he’d been carrying since he’d brought him from reception.

‘This is what I want you to do,’ he said, putting the folder on the desk in front of He Tian and opening it up. Inside were print-outs of emails and blurred photographs and lists of what looked like locations with timestamps and phone records. It looked, He Tian thought, like someone’s life in paper version.

‘And this is?’

‘Your client is a woman in her thirties,’ his brother said, pulling out a picture of a woman with short hair and quiet looking smile. ‘Mother of two. Her ex-husband has been giving her unsolicited attention and she wants to sue or at least get an order put against him that won’t be ignored if he breaks it. She doesn’t want a lawyer until she has full evidence of harassment. She doesn’t think the courts will take her claims seriously.’

‘She thinks a court won’t rule in favour of a mother?’

His brother shrugged. ‘I haven’t asked. Her sister works in HR.’

‘You’re giving out freebies?’

‘No. She’s paying. But she knows she can trust us.’

‘And you’re giving this to me when I have no knowledge of Chinese law.’

‘It’s not about knowing the law. It’s about finding evidence of everything her ex-husband does that seems wrong, and seeing what misconduct of law you can pin it to. Eventually we can pass it onto our legal department to iron things out, but the bulk of this work is all on you.’

He Tian glanced at the stack of papers. Considering the kind of job it was, it wasn’t really that thick.

‘This is just the preliminary stuff she sent to us,’ He Tian said, catching his gaze. ‘Start with this, and then you’ll need to start surveillance on his whereabouts, start looking into recent phone records. Look into his emails. Get in contact with her as well. Might be worth hearing her story rather than just working with soft-copies of everything. Everything you need to access should be explained in the guide I mentioned and…’ He tilted his head. ‘You don’t look impressed. What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ He Tian said, shrugging, thumbing through the pages. ‘I just thought you might have put me onto something serious. Like gangs and the Triad and shit.’

‘You think a psychologically unstable man who poses a threat to his wife and children isn’t serious?’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘I don’t care what you meant. You wanted this. This is what you’re getting, all right?’

‘Sure.’

His brother nodded. It wasn’t enthusiasm, even if He Tian couldn’t deny that at least this wouldn’t be boring, but it was all he had. ‘I want phone calls, emails, his movements. I want to know what porn he watches and what time he has a shower and what he ate for lunch. Start searching.’

His brother patted him on the shoulder and headed back down the row of desks towards the lift. He Tian turned around in his chair, stared at the stack of papers on his desk and wondered if he’d really wanted this, and then he grabbed a highlighter from the stationary pot on his desk and started on the first page.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149578591824/aphorism-xi


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149600884989/aphorism-xii-a-19-days-fanfic

Zhengxi was waiting for him outside the gates at 1:52 PM; he’d said 2 PM but Jian Yi knew he was early for everything and could be pretty impatient when he wanted to be. In hindsight, he could have skipped class better than just walking through the gates while people called after him and their lunch break was coming to an end; could have written a note, said he felt ill, but he didn’t really think of that until after.

Zhengxi was waiting for him, and Abel’s lead was in his hand and the dog was just sitting there at his feet, and Jian Yi wondered what he’d say if he asked to take a photo of him because wasn’t it so fucking domestic? Picking him up from school, going to his apartment to get Abel so they could go for a walk, the way he just propped himself up against the outside wall of the school and watched the cars drive past and the students who had privileges coming back from their lunch break and waited for _him_.

He could see how the other students glanced at him, how tall he was, how vacant he sometimes looked, how distant, looking at something they couldn’t see around them, wondering if he was someone’s brother – someone’s lover? – and Jian Yi felt the inexplicable urge to tell them all that Zhengxi was his.

It took him a while to notice that Jian Yi was standing there, which was probably for the best, since he had been standing there for a while, and when he did he moved away from the wall and gave him a sort of half-wave that was just the lifting of a hand.

‘We’re so _bad_ , Xixi,’ Jian Yi said, walking over to him.

When Zhengxi didn’t really say anything but offer a dim smile he crouched down and squished Abel’s face. Her tongue was lolling and her eyes were bright, and he found himself making stupid noises at her excitement.

‘We should go,’ Zhengxi said. ‘Before the teachers start chasing you down the road.’

Jian Yi straightened and shrugged, because Zhengxi was being kind of quiet but this wasn’t usual. They headed down a couple of streets, stopping at a café stall that Jian Yi had been going to for a few weeks now. The woman that ran it was in her fifties and talked about her new grandchildren while she made coffee and bagels and sweet iced teas.

‘Shouldn’t you kids be studying?’ she asked them, making Jian Yi a vanilla frappe with cream and chunks of toffee and too much syrup, and handing Zhengxi a coffee. Black. No sugar.

‘We’re not kids,’ Jian Yi said.

She raised an eyebrow at the uniform he was wearing, and said, ‘Everyone’s a kid when you get to my age.’

‘Come on, _ayi_ ,’ Jian Yi said playfully, because she liked the compliments, especially when they came from someone like him. ‘I thought you were your daughter’s _sister_ when you showed me that picture last week.’

She cleared her throat, pressed a hand to her lined neck, fingers weighed down with rings, the nails painted a velvet red. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I suppose I don’t _look_ my age…’

They talked some more, and he asked how the grandkids were doing before handing over some cash to pay for them both, and then they headed further into town until they came up to the river bank, the city stretching out in front of them in a sprawling metropolis of white paint and high glass and bursts of green where trees tried to fit.

The air was muggy now, the banks high from the rain, and the sun was starting to push its way through clouds that were fading to a sun-lit yellow like old bruises. Abel stopped them every few minutes to sniff at a flower or drinking from the puddles, and Jian Yi didn’t mind. He liked the slowness of the afternoon unfurling around them, walking like there was nowhere they had to go, nowhere they had to be, watching the boats come up the river as they dipped in and out of sunrays and were hidden beneath the cold shadows of the skyscrapers.

Jian Yi slung an arm around Zhengxi’s shoulder. Their height was almost even, though Zhengxi had maybe a centimetre on him now, so it was easy, the sleeve of his blazer against Zhengxi’s neck, the strong set of his shoulders beneath his arm. He’d always been broad.

Zhengxi shrugged and rolled his shoulders back, and Jian Yi’s arm fell back to his side with a dull kind of sensation.

For a minute he didn’t say anything, moved his straw through the cream on his frappe until it was a mess of syrup and condensed milk. Zhengxi didn’t say anything either, sipping from his coffee, Abel’s lead around his wrist; he liked the dog more than he let on.

‘What’s wrong?’ Jian Yi said. Knew he was quiet; always had been. Didn’t slip easily into conversation with other people in school. Didn’t always show that he found things funny even if he did, because his expressions didn’t work in the same way as most people. It had made it fucking _hard_ trying to figure him out sometimes, and Jian Yi wondered if he wore him out with his own thrumming constancy, but he didn’t mind having to figure him out.

When he didn’t reply, he put his arm on him again, just to see, and this time Zhengxi just stepped away.

‘Just don’t, okay?’

Jian Yi felt his hand clenching and one side of him felt kind of like it was burning, because someone rejecting his affection always felt so confusingly personal. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Okay.’

They walked for a little more, and Zhengxi threw his coffee cup into one of the recycling bins along the riverside path, and then he said, ‘How was school?’ like he was suddenly open for conversation.

‘Fine,’ Jian Yi said.

‘And the lessons?’

‘Fine.’

‘That’s good,’ he said, and Jian Yi felt like Zhengxi was some sort of distant, disassociated father asking his kid about school when he hadn’t seen him in three years and didn’t really know what else there was to talk about because he didn’t _know_ him enough to talk about anything else. ‘Did you have homework?’

Jian Yi stopped. Couldn’t do this, ambling along like it was all fluid and smooth and _fine_ , couldn’t pretend like he didn’t think it was a bit fucking weird that Zhengxi had been the one to ask him to skip when all he’d done for the past few weeks was talk about how important it was that Jian Yi kept up his attendance.

‘What’s going on, Zhengxi?’ he said.

Zhengxi turned and looked at him, and didn’t seem surprised that Jian Yi had stopped. Abel took the opportunity to lie on the ground because the path was wet and cool and she put her head on her paws and watched the boats, ears pinned up.

‘What do you mean?’ Zhengxi said.

‘Was it the texting?’ Jian Yi said. ‘Am I annoying you? Because you’re the one that wanted to take Abel for a walk and for me to skip school. You know I’d say yes even before you asked, so don’t act like you’re suddenly regretting it because you thought I’d say no.’

Zhengxi swallowed, and looked away, and Jian Yi suddenly wished that Zhengxi was sometimes a bit like him – couldn’t keep his mouth shut, showed how he felt even in how he moved sometimes, cried because he was _sad_ and didn’t just hide it in the silences and the pensive expressions. He felt guilty for wanting him to be someone else sometimes, and guilty for wanting him to deal with things in the same way as everyone else because everyone was _different_ , but he also wondered why humanity dealt with some things in the same way and in others reacted entirely differently. Was that, in fact, what made them human? Their ability to be selective sometimes and develop an individuality when everything else – the searching height of trees, the weight of stone, the drawing of lightning to high places – was so uniform.

‘I’m sorry,’ Zhengxi said eventually. He looked awkward and kind of turned in on himself. ‘It’s just… Someone said something to me earlier.’

‘Yeah?’

‘About me,’ he said. ‘Well. Not really about me.’

Jian Yi frowned, still a bit hurt. ‘Do I have to pull on your tongue to get you to _say_ it?’

And Zhengxi said, ‘Shut up, Jian Yi,’ but not with any real venom. ‘I just… Can I ask you something?’

‘Anything,’ Jian Yi said, which was true.

Zhengxi nodded, like he’d passed through to the next step, and maybe needed a shove to take the leap. ‘Do you… Is it difficult? For you?’

‘Is what difficult?’

‘Your— You— Being gay.’

The startled surprise got stuck somewhere in his throat, so Jian Yi started coughing until his eyes watered and Zhengxi put a hand on his back. This time, it was Jian Yi who shrugged it off, sputtering a bit, trying to drag in enough air, waiting until his heart stopped pounding and his head stopped sounding like the moment when you take off in a plane and your ears pop and suddenly there’s just a quietness and the roar of the engine and the coldness of air conditioning on your skin, grimy from wandering around the closed-in emptiness of an airport.

‘Jian Yi—’

‘You _still_ think that’s what this is about, don’t you?’ he said, wanting to laugh and knowing that it wouldn’t sound right and wouldn’t _feel_ right. ‘You’re still trying to put this label on me so you can understand me, aren’t you?’

‘What? No. _No_. I’m just trying to understand what this is—’

‘This? What the fuck is _this_?’

‘You,’ Zhengxi said hotly. ‘I’m trying to understand you.’

Jian Yi stared at him. The clouds had thinned further, until the sky was a hazy blue-grey of early autumn. The leaves on the trees that bordered the path rattled like dry bones, and he was distantly aware of the sound of police sirens and the low blare of the boats as they passed beneath the bridges that arched over the river. Distantly aware, because he had the strange sensation that he was, in fact, not there.

He said, quietly, ‘What did that person say to you today?’

‘She said I should be careful. That I was giving off the wrong impression.’

‘Because of me?’

‘Because of the way I looked when I got your fucking text messages.’

‘So this is my fault?’

‘Don’t be fucking ridiculous.’

‘Me? Why the fuck am I the one being ridiculous? You’re the one being all fucking defensive because someone thought you were gay. Why the fuck does it matter what anyone else thinks whether it’s true or not?’

‘Because I thought about how I treated you, and I felt – I felt so _bad_ , Jian Yi.’

‘How you treated me?’

‘Every time I hit you. Pushed you away. Because—’

‘Because you didn’t _feel_ like that about me,’ Jian Yi said, teeth clenching around the words, because he hated that they were true but hated himself more for spending so much of his life wishing they were. ‘Why the fuck would I have ever really expected you to kiss me back if you didn’t want to? We were fifteen, my _god_. I was a fucking dumb shit who tried to take what I wanted without thinking and you – you didn’t know what to do with that. I don’t fucking _resent_ you for it. Can you imagine how I’d feel if you let me _do_ that to you and had never once _wanted_ it? I would _die_.’

‘I made you cry.’

‘ _Fifteen_ ,’ Jian Yi said again, tormented, like that explained everything when he knew it didn’t. He knew that all of this wasn’t entirely true. Because there had been once, just once, when Zhengxi had pressed back, let his hands touch. Maybe he got curious, wanted to try it, but they didn’t talk about it, and he wondered if Zhengxi had even forgotten it happened. _Chosen_ to forget.

‘And what if that’s not why I was angry with the girl?’ he said then. ‘What if I was thinking about me more than you?’

Jian Yi’s hand gripped the plastic up in his hand so tightly that some of the cold mess of his drink spilled over onto his hand, sticky, and Abel started licking it off the floor as it dripped.  

‘Don’t fuck with me like this, Zhengxi.’

Zhengxi ran a hand through his hair, like he didn’t know what else to do, like that reaction was easier than words.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to think anymore. You’re back and you’re here and suddenly you’re the only thing my life seems to revolve around anymore and I’m fucking confused.’

Jian Yi thought he would cry if he let himself hear the words anymore, because of the words themselves and because of the look on Zhengxi’s face that was open and devastating and made him look… Yeah. Made him look like he was fifteen again and made Jian Yi’s heart ache with that fucking familiarity of being ‘back then’.

‘Whatever you…’ He swallowed, voice sounding thick and lacking clarity and he didn’t want he said to be misheard. ‘Everything will be fine. It will always be okay.’

‘What’s happening, Jian Yi?’ he said, looking like he didn’t understand, like he didn’t really mean to ask it. He had the look on his face of a kid who didn’t understand what someone meant when they talked about things like ‘love’ and ‘death’, too abstract and too much for them to understand but not too young for them to still have to go through it.

‘Nothing’s happening, Zhengxi. It’s why I said everything.’

‘Sure,’ Zhengxi said, but Jian Yi could tell he wasn’t really listening. He had gone somewhere, that distant place that he looked into and filled him with vacancy. Jian Yi wondered where it was, if it he could go there, hold his hand, make him stop feeling like Jian Yi maybe always had.

Maybe none of this was the same. Maybe this was confusion. Maybe this was just because he was now there and real and Zhengxi had to look at him and feel the warmth of him and the relief that he was just alive was overwhelming.

But secretly, quietly, in some dark, cavernous part of himself, knowing that it would make Zhengxi hurt and wanting it anyway, he wished it was so much more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149600884989/aphorism-xii-a-19-days-fanfic


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149647251154/aphorism-xiii-a-19-days-fanfic

‘Meet me?’

The voice, on the other end, was worn. ‘I’m busy.’

‘Please?’

A slow silence, the sound of a sigh. ‘Fine.’

He Tian picked him up in his car at the entrance to the apartment complex, watched him slide into the seat and not look at him. He smelled of the tea tree facewash he used and dying flowers; his eyes were smudged underneath with not enough sleep and He Tian wondered if he’d done that.

Absently he realised that he was making himself seem too important in the grand scheme of Guan Shan’s life, but he was trying to fix that, and thought that at least he was aware of his own hubris.

They drove into the centre, the car slipping down familiar backroads and hovering with quiet patience at lights that glowed with a neon urgency in the dark. It was not an automatic, even if it had been the price of one, because He Tian liked the feel of the stick under his hand. He liked the building growl of the car that, no matter how high he let it go, how much rubber it burned, he would always be the one to give the release. Again. Hubris. But he was _trying_ , wasn’t he?

The music on the radio was quiet and sad that night, and he was conscious of Guan Shan sitting there, elbow on the window, thumb running on his lip, staring at his reflection in the glass windows and out further. Maybe wondering what other people were doing; maybe wondering what would happen if he had their life. Maybe just watching and thinking nothing because it was better than having to talk to him.

The skyscrapers were lit up like bones on an x-ray and everywhere, outside the quiet hum of the car, its sleek leather seats and the dashboard with too many dials, there were so many people. People grabbing a coffee or a beer on their way home from work, people shopping with huge, minimalist bags that said more about them that the place they’d bought them from, people wandering because the day had ended but the night had just begun, people who didn’t know what they were doing and just wanted to be among people because it might make them feel alive and not alone like He Tian knew it would, pushing way through crowds that didn’t see you and didn’t know you and probably never would.

They parked in the company carpark, and headed across the road, towards the pathway that would take them to the centre isles of Xuanwu Lake. In the day it was expansive and filled with runners and stay-at-home mothers in their lycra and leg warmers, flies hovering above the expanse of the water in summer, mist curling off it in winter. At night, whatever time of year, the city was lit up in the backdrop on one side, and on the other is was plunged in darkness and looked like a secret. There were smalls light along the pathways, narrow tracks between the trees that meant Guan Shan’s arm had to press up against his, and He Tian thought the whole thing seemed like a fairytale, a tiny oasis in the middle of a sprawling urban landscape and the Purple Mountain.

Going there used to make him feel like he was lying; it was detachment from the real fabric of the city, where water and trees made you feel like you could hide from it and not leave if you had to. He used to look at the pagodas and the temples and imagine that one day he would live in one and not have to come out, but he thought of all the people that would walk past and stare and take photos of his home and he wanted that less than the anonymity of an apartment that got lost in a skyscraper.

On one of the isles, there was a small wooden jetty, lit up with lanterns. It was empty, and He Tian sat on the edge of it. He took his shoes off, put his feet in the water that was cold, leaned back on his hands, and waited as Guan Shan hesitated, warring with something in himself, then sat beside him, cross-legged, back arched as he folded himself over.

‘How fucking romantic,’ Guan Shan muttered eventually, because He Tian knew, after the silence of the car ride, the walk over the arched bridges and around the tight paths that made their breaths laboured because they both had the tendency to walk fast like they needed to run, that he couldn’t really hold out that long.

‘Isn’t it?’ He Tian said. He felt some small, smug satisfaction with it, even if his tone had lacked anything that could be mistaken for sincerity.

‘What do you want, He Tian?’ he said. ‘I need to be at home with my ma.’

‘Doesn’t she stay late at her friend’s house for book club on Mondays?’

‘What?’

‘That’s what you told me.’

Guan Shan was staring at him. ‘I never told you that.’

He Tian could fill the questions brimming over, felt like he was standing on a precipice that waited him to make a wrong move. Wanted him to, just for the hell of it. He could feel the tension between them like purpled clouds and air charged with lightning. ‘I wanted to tell you that I got a job.’

He was still staring, but then a frowned. ‘You couldn’t have text me?’ he said.

Really, his lack of acknowledgement, of enthusiasm, should not have surprised him. How would he react if Guan Shan had told him he had a job? It was employment. It was a fucking pay check. What, really, did it mean to someone like him?

‘I’m working for my brother,’ He Tian said, kicking his feet so the water, dark like blood at night, rippled quietly out out out. ‘Surveillance work.’

‘Bet that was hard. Really had to polish your CV up to apply for that one, didn’t you?’

‘What?’

‘Well, I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove? That nepotism is quite as fucking endemic as it always has been?’

 _Big words_ , he almost said, catching them just in time. Because he could be cruel sometimes, but not like that. And he knew that Guan Shan was nothing anywhere near ‘stupid’. He’d heard from the teachers that the only thing that held him back from a college or university was his mother and money. He Tian was beginning to hate the unfairness of it all, but he knew that, really, he’d gone through nothing. Couldn’t be angry on behalf of other people when he didn’t _know_ what they’d had to face.

He Tian bit the inside of his cheek, scratched his nose. Couldn’t believe he was going to say it but: ‘Thought you might have been happy for me.’

Guan Shan snorted. ‘Oh _sure_. Because I just got another bill through the post for my ma’s meds and haven’t had a single fucking response from every place I’ve handed in my CV and everyone that _does_ respond tells me I’m _not what they’re looking for_ when they get a look at me but none of that matters because your brother just added you to his fucking _payroll_.’

‘My brother could give you a job.’

Guan Shan got up, got to his feet so fast he almost fell in the water. He started to leave, shaking with a kind of anger that, again, He Tian had caused.

He stood, too. ‘Guan Shan—’

‘I don’t _want_ a job with your brother!’ Guan Shan shouted, turning. ‘I don’t want anything from you!’

‘Then why are you _telling_ me all of this! Why bother telling me your fucking sob story if you won’t let me _do_ anything!’

‘I don’t know! I don’t fucking _know_. You’re just _there_. You’re the only one who ever fucking listens even if everything you say makes me want to smack you in the face and you’re all I’ve fucking got and I fucking _hate_ it.’

And even in the dark He Tian could see how his face was screwed up and angry and god he looked hurt and _young_. Even more than when he used to turn up to school with a busted lip and plasters all over his face and cut knuckles and He Tian would pull him to the side, cage him in against a wall, tell him who _did_ that to him and who was he _fighting_ _all_ the _time_ , and Guan Shan would push him away and tell him to fuck off which made He Tian, _god_ , made him want him more.

‘Why?’ He Tian said, and he took a step forward. ‘Am I that awful that you can’t stand that you feel something for me?’

‘No. No, you’re – you’re perfect. Sometimes. And I hate that you’re trying so hard for me after how you used to do things.’

Another step. ‘ _Why_?’

‘Because do you realise how fucking inadequate I feel next to you? With everything? Like, it’s not so much anymore that you’ve got the money and that you’re fucking hot as hell – it’s that you’re actually trying fucking _hard_ to be decent to someone like me who doesn’t _deserve_ it. It’s that you used to be so shit and now you’re not and I haven’t – _I_ haven’t even changed.’ He was crying. ‘I’m stuck here. Barely graduated high school. Can barely keep myself alive let alone my ma. Still failing everyone around me. And I can’t fucking _stand_ the thought that this is my life now.’

‘It doesn’t have to be. Let me help you. Let me make you see that things can be good. For you. For us. We – _you_ deserve better. Better than me, probably—’

‘That’s not true—’

‘Yeah, it is,’ he said, and this time he was close enough that he could put his hand on his jaw, watch his eyes close just for a second, lashes wet, and when he opened them he was searching to meet his in the dim light.

He Tian ran his thumb over his skin, part of him always stunned by how soft it was, how fragile it seemed, how he’d worn so many cuts and bruises over the years and hadn’t fallen to pieces. This, he thought, looking at his skin and how fucking beautiful he thought Guan Shan was, was not about fucking, and he wished it could have been because that would be _simple_. He said, ‘You think I’m better but I’m not. I’m really not. The only person I’m different with is you. I still think the same and want to do fucking twisted shit to people because I can but—’

‘But you don’t, He Tian. You don’t. And that’s what’s different.’

* * *

They didn’t know what to say afterwards because they reached a sort of impasse. Because He Tian didn’t know – hadn’t known that Guan Shan had thought of him like that, like he had the potential to be something, really, far better than what he was. He didn’t know Guan Shan saw himself that way – stuck, unchanging, immovable, trapped like a dog in an iron cage and rough rope tight around its neck.

They didn’t know what to say because maybe the honesty had been slightly too raw, a rawness that had come from saying things they hadn’t meant to and not because they had wanted to. It was not the quiet indulgence of sleepover secrets, where you got to whisper things in the night as you hung on the cusp of the subconscious and didn’t mind spilling things like they were breathing. This, like most things, was ripped from them without censure, a kid pulling wings off bees.

They sat back down on the side of the dock, wood panels cutting into the backs of their legs, and He Tian lit a cigarette.

‘About your CV,’ He Tian began. He heard Guan Shan sigh, but it was resignation and not anger, so he carried on. ‘I could look over it for you. Give you interview practice.’

‘Because you’ve had so much experience.’

‘I have actually. Dad made me go to lessons when I was in high school. Wanted me to be well-rounded or some shit. Make sure I knew how normal people got through life, he said.’

‘Normal people don’t get to have paid fucking elocution lessons’

‘It wasn’t elocution. It was employability sessions.’

‘Whatever. Same thing.’

He Tian didn’t tell him that they weren’t the same at all, because he wasn’t interested in where the conversation was going. He just wanted an answer.

‘Maybe,’ Guan Shan said eventually, when He Tian didn’t reply. ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘You should.’

‘Don’t say should. I hate it when people say should. Like, I’ll fucking do it if I want to, all right?’

‘Sure,’ He Tian said, shrugging. He took another drag of his cigarette, then passed it to Guan Shan, who took a puff, and coughed, and threw it in the lake, let it fizzle and die out with a tiny sound like a sigh. He looked like he regretted it, not because he’d wanted it but because he’d spoiled the beauty of the place with disposable human arrogance.

‘Still fucking disgusting,’ Guan Shan said.

‘And yet you _still_ try.’

‘Every time you offer it’s because you think I need it. Makes me wonder if it might actually help one time.’

That was, in fact, true. He Tian had offered a few days after he’d first kissed him, found him sitting at the back of the school with a bunch of other guys who just got up and left when they saw him. The wire fencing was higher and the garbage used to be kept there and He Tian wondered if Guan Shan hung out there because that’s maybe where he thought he belonged. He Tian had told him that what he’d done was wrong, not really understanding why at the time, but knowing that Guan Shan had cried and had a bruise on his neck the next day because he’d help him so he couldn’t move and that had made He Tian feel kind of sick.

He’d offered again an hour before their exams at the end of middle school, and then again in high school, the first time they’d fucked on the floor of He Tian’s apartment; a cigarette after sex seemed like the right thing even if, now, He Tian wondered if he’d dirtied the whole thing more than he already had.

The last time had been on the final day of high school, like it was a farewell kind of thing, like the dull haze of tobacco marked something important with them now. They hadn’t known if they would see each other again, Guan Shan giving him a flippant ‘nice knowing you’, and He Tian had called him a fucking idiot and kissed him until he saw stars and left marks on his throat and in the dip of his collarbones that told him he wasn’t fucking going _anywhere_.

He Tian said, ‘Then be smart next time and say no, idiot.’

‘Like I could.’

He Tian was about to reach for the cigarette packet in the back of his jeans pocket and draw out another one, but he didn’t, and thought maybe that was a good thing.

‘Always surprised me that you never smoked. Or, you know, did other things.’

‘Why, because I looked the part? Because I didn’t reflect someone of my fucking _circumstances_?’

He Tian rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not talking about the fucking _aesthetic_.’

Guan Shan shrugged, picked at the red band on his wrist with his fingers. ‘Don’t have the money for it,’ he said honestly. He Tian wondered if the aversion to it also lay in something to do with his father, but when he’d spent a day tracking Guan Shan in the office of his father’s company and read through a few reports, he hadn’t opened up the reports of his old man. Could have, quite easily, cursor blinking. _Click click_.

He’d left the office that day feeling kind of dirty, and he hadn’t watched him again. He knew even as he was doing it that it had been wrong. At least, he thought, he was aware of it and wasn’t trying to convince himself otherwise, some sort of strange justification that it was what normal people did.

He’d never wanted to have normal with anyone more than he wanted normal with him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149647251154/aphorism-xiii-a-19-days-fanfic


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149684922194/aphorism-xiv-a-19-days-fanfic

Her husband, by all accounts, was too clean. Good employee, good father until the divorce, played football at the weekends with his colleagues and didn’t drink too much. A professed Christian who went to church on Sundays and helped out at a shelter once a month. Paid his rent on time and, to someone who didn’t know him as well as his ex-wife, Chai Qing Ling, was a loving and devoted father.

Men like that, however, were the sort that He Tian mistrusted on instinct.

Not out of some glorified sense of envy, but because he knew too well that people had spiders in their closet that some digging would prove were skeletons, and because he wanted to be right, and he knew that the shaking in Qui Ling’s voice when he spoke to her, when she told him about the gifts he’d sent her – used condoms and snakes and photos of her that he shouldn’t have had – the way he’d waited outside her apartment, the way he’d threatened any partner she’d had and forced her to be alone and unloved – that was all entirely real.

And she wasn’t scared. She was hurt, and fucking _angry_.

‘I don’t care what you get on him. I don’t care if you fucking frame him or throw his gasping body in the Yangtze. Just get him the fuck away from me and my kids.’

Politely, he told her he’d do all that the company could legally do. He knew what the papers thought they did in the shadows, knew that all rumours started somewhere. But, really, he didn’t want to fuck this up by going to the men who were their suits a little differently to everyone else.

He Tian had seen them, tugging at the collars, hands fisted at their sides, eyes swinging slowly about as they stood in the lobby or the way they kept their backs close to the wall if they could, ready to reach for something in the inside of their blazer rather than press the emergency button in the elevator. Different reactions; different principles. He Tian thought they stood out like hitmen walking through a diamond-clean building would.  

‘We have a lot of contractors from all sorts of backgrounds here,’ his brother had told him when he had asked about them.

He Tian had laughed.

He stood up from his computer, because his back was aching and his eyes were growing sore and it had been two weeks since he’d started and it was frustrating but his brother said he was doing fine. He headed to the coffee machine near the back of the room, knowing that eyes were watching him, wondering who he was and how he got there, wondering if he was from the He family, if he was someone’s young lover, if he was a kid fresh out of university who’d landed a job that was probably too intense for someone with no background in this kind of thing.

The room was littered with people who used to be police officers and private investigators and government data analysts who liked the pensions from their last jobs but liked the new offices and the free coffee and the dubious grey line of morality here more.

He Tian pressed a button, and it started whirring. It stood on a counter next to a sink and beneath a couple of shelves of mugs. There was a small fridge and a microwave and a vending machine that was free and obviously empty at the end of every day.

He felt someone come up behind him as the machine sputtered milk into the mug, whirring, not seeing but just feeling the kind of change in air, particles shifted to be filled with flesh and clothing and shadows.

‘Hey,’ they said.

He Tian glanced over his shoulder. ‘Hey.’

A youngish guy, couldn’t have been more than thirty. Wore his shirt a little too open at the collar and had mussed hair that gave him a sort of _look_.

‘Glasses suit you,’ the guy said.

He Tian stared at him. ‘I’m not used to staring at a computer screen,’ he said carefully.

‘Huh. What were you doing before you came here?’

‘Tried to set up a private courier service.’

‘That’s pretty cool.’

‘Yeah, well, it didn’t work,’ He Tian said, grabbing his coffee. ‘Excuse me.’

The guy stepped around him. He was shorter than He Tian, but broader, and He Tian had never liked being shut in. Quietly he guessed that this was how Guan Shan used to feel.

‘Me and some guys are grabbing a drink after work if you want to come? I get that being new here can be pretty daunting in such a big place. And everyone’s always working on their own cases so it can get kind of… isolating.’

‘It’s fine, actually.’

He smiled easily, irritatingly. ‘Sure. Offer’s still there. I’m Jan Xiu, by the way.’

‘Tian.’

‘That’s intimate. No family name? Are you a spy?’ He laughed to himself at this, a kind of child-like thing that would have made other people laugh and smile congenially if they’d heard it. He Tian did not.

‘Take it or leave it.’

‘Oh, more than happy to take it.’

His expression, which He Tian found interesting, did not change. _Make what you want of this_ , it said, a kind of automatic defence that said his words couldn’t be construed as anything other than a convivial exchange between co-workers huddled around the coffee machine. Or it could, however, promise stained sheets and bodies fucking against glass panes in the dark.

Like the thing itself, a response to that could have gone a number of ways. But He Tian was being smart here, and this was not high school where he was pretty sure some of the teachers wanted to fuck him and he didn’t mind indulging their fantasies with an upwards gaze or a smile that meant, yeah, this could be yours if you wanted to take the risk.

Here, he was kind of content with the small space of his desk, the anonymity of it, broken only by standing up to go to the bathroom or to grab a coffee, like emerging from heady clouds that kept everything otherwise submerged and muted. So he just shrugged at the comment, maybe pretended to be a little slow on the uptake, didn’t really care that the guy’s eyes followed him back to his desk and that maybe he’d given a sort of sigh.

He sat down at his desk, unlocked his computer, and glanced at the blinking IM message on the screen.

It was a message from IT. He’d messaged that morning, confused at a pixelated street camera he’d been watching from the night before. He’d sent the woman from IT a few clips and images over the past weeks to sharpen, and they’d turned out to show the guy buying rice from a corner shop or him standing in the alcove of a street while it rained and he waited for a taxi. Perfectly innocuous, by all accounts.

 _Can you make this image sharper?_ he’d asked her. Didn’t know her name, what she looked like, just had the blinking IM username ‘IT/25’ that his brother told him to message.

 _Hope this helps_ , she’d replied. _Reckon whoever this is has it coming…_

And he opened the picture, stared at it for a few minutes, because he couldn’t quite work out what he was seeing, but then it was, quite suddenly, wonderfully clear.

His eyes lit up, and a smile, small and slow, worked its way across his face.

‘You’re mine now, you fuck.’

* * *

They were watching a movie when the text came through, at least, Zhengxi thought it was probably a text. It was something stupid about zombies and people turning into monsters turning into garbage bins and lots of gruesome close ups and, all in all, not something that he would have chosen.

But Jian Yi wanted to, so they went, and he’d eaten all his popcorn by the time the adverts finished (kernels in his hair and sticking to his green jumper) and ate the rest of Zhengxi’s before the first half. He sat forward in his seat, and god his mouth just didn’t stop _moving_ , and his lips were stained red from the slushie Zhengxi had bought and he didn’t seem to blink and had his elbows on both armrests even if one of them was _technically_ Zhengxi’s but he didn’t mind sharing, and he used Zhengxi’s straw even though he _told_ him that his was the blue one five times and he wasn’t fifteen and thinking about indirect kissing anymore he _wasn’t_ —

All of this, this kind of inward torment that had seemed reserved forever, only, for Jian Yi, this distraction that was like watching a clip of a car crash on repeat, was probably why he saw it.

Wasn’t watching the movie, like he should have been, admiring the prosthetics and the warbled noises of the creature and the sparing dialogue of the actors whose names he couldn’t remember. Instead he was watching Jian Yi pull his phone out his pocket, screen lit up with a message, and watched him become, in the time it took for the light and the shadows to configure themselves in the stark glow on his face, entirely unrecognisable.

Zhengxi didn’t say anything, because he couldn’t, because he didn’t know who was sitting next to him and sharing the drink that he had bought. Instantly, he had become _other_.

Strange how someone could arrange the way they held their eyes and their mouth and moved their jaw and become someone else, like they had been wearing the skin of someone else and was carefully starting to peel it off.

Zhengxi didn’t say anything as the movie careered onwards, down bad plot lines and awkward dialogue and a tension that didn’t seem to peak and kept going _up up up_. Didn’t say anything when the bag of popcorn fell to the floor and tipped in a mess down the back of the row in front and Jian Yi didn’t even notice, just kept staring at his phone, still, like he’d heard a noise from downstairs as he lay in bed and couldn’t move just in case.

Zhengxi didn’t move until the lights lifted up, because the screen had gone black, and there was a guy coming around with a broom and a bin liner and Zhengxi didn’t want him to get annoyed because it was obviously their fault that the popcorn was all over the fucking floor and—

‘For god’s sake, Jian Yi, _get up._ ’

And then Jian Yi looked at him, because for a moment it was like he didn’t know who he was.

‘The film’s over,’ he said, and couldn’t look at him because the disassociation was jarring, and he didn’t want him to keep looking at him like that, like he was passing through a new city on the train, not really stopping, like the buildings were familiar because it was still stone and glass but there was nothing there that really looked the same and it was a blur to look too closely.

‘What?’

‘The film. It’s over. You spaced out for like an hour.’

He blinked, looked at the phone in his hand – the screen had gone dark now; had gone dark fifty-three minutes ago – and then looked back at Zhengxi.

And he _laughed_. And it was… It was so far from anything that Zhengxi was almost repulsed. Because there was _nothing_ in it. Not even the wryness of self-deprecation, of awkwardness, or the confusion of having lost time. It was not humour or sardonic anger. It was devoid.

‘Sorry,’ he said, and pulled himself to his feet, chair seat snapping back in place.

They walked for ten minutes. The sun had set a few hours ago and the moon was glistening and yellow and the trees were lit up like wildfire beneath glowing lampposts and the pressured burden of autumn. Zhengxi thought that it was quiet for a Saturday night as they headed back to Jian Yi’s, which is why he didn’t mind reaching out to pull the popcorn that had caught in the wool of his jumper or the few pieces he’d somehow gotten in his hair.

He had that kind of thirsty, too-much sugar taste on his tongue that was stale and he felt it dry even more as Jian Yi just stopped and let him do it and didn’t even really look at him.

‘I think… I think maybe I’ll just go back on my own tonight.’

Zhengxi looked at him, let his hand fall. Tried to tell if that was really what he wanted or if it was one of those moments of non-sincerity where he wanted Zhengxi to do exactly what he said he didn’t.

‘Okay,’ Zhengxi said. He couldn’t even feel hurt right now that Jian Yi had cancelled when they were going to just watch crappy TV until 4 a.m. Maybe they’d get takeout and throw a ball around the small park at the back of Jian Yi’s apartment complex when it got to midnight because Abel got restless and they liked the quietness of it and the lights that made all the colours seem slightly off. Wind trapped by the high-rise, the sounds of the residents contained and muffled in their boxed apartments, and they could pretend they were in the garden of their house that they didn’t share with a thousand other people in one small, rising, rearing space.

He didn’t even feel hurt because he wanted to know what was on the phone, thought about snatching it just to get a glimpse of blurred characters before Jian Yi would hit him because it seemed, right now, that he wouldn’t care what he did.

Zhengxi didn’t feel hurt because all he was was _scared_ that maybe Jian Yi was leaving again and this time he almost knew it and that was probably worse.

‘Can we do tomorrow instead?’ Jian Yi said.

‘Okay,’ Zhengxi said, wondering which version of him he’d get to see, wondering if tomorrow, at all, would even happen.

‘I’ve just… Got some stuff to figure out. I’m sorry.’

Zhengxi folded his arms, more because he felt like he needed to press something against his ribs than anything else. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

‘I—’

‘ _Can’t_. Yeah. I get it.’

He looked torn, but Zhengxi didn’t really care, because he didn’t like anything about this. Didn’t like that the time they had together was being spoiled and spat on by the things that had happened to Jian Yi from the time that they hadn’t been together. _The past is in the past_ , his mum always said. Not for any particular reason other than she liked the inane blatancy of it, but Zhengxi thought he should probably tell that to Jian Yi. Tell him he didn’t have to keep slipping into it, didn’t have to let it touch him now because he was back and he was with him and shouldn’t that be all that mattered?

In the end he didn’t tell him, and he knew that Jian Yi was standing in that same spot for a while after he’d turned the corner and headed back to his own place. He grabbed a taxi, in the end, because he didn’t really want to have to walk on his own anymore down dark streets where neon signs flashed in the window and street vendors called out to sell him Fujian dumplings and sesame pancakes even if he wasn’t hungry and street food was only really best when you ate it, greasy and messy, laughing with someone else.

He got the taxi because he wanted the city to melt into a kind of blur of lights and people and indistinct, fleeting faces, and maybe just pretend that all this had never really been.

* * *

Jian Yi opened his phone again when he got back. The lights were off and he grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen, filled Abel’s bowl with food and water and scratched her on the head as she slept on the sofa.

He fell onto his bed, blinds open so that if he turned the light on he would become, quite suddenly, something of an exhibition to those who looked across at him or peered up from the street, and the possibility for that kind of rawness, that explicit vulnerability, was tempting. He turned his phone on. Stared at the message. Wondered how long they’d wait until they came because he hadn’t replied.

It was a simple thing, rather mundane, and he didn’t know why he’d reacted like he had. Maybe because it was the same line they’d always used, but this time, seeing it on the screen of his phone, somehow made it concrete. Gave it a timestamp and a reality that the echo of words didn’t hold for long.

_You’ve got a job to do. – F._

In the end he just went to sleep, because they’d ruined the film he’d wanted to see, and he thought they could wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149684922194/aphorism-xiv-a-19-days-fanfic


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149713225024/aphorism-xv-a-19-days-fanfic

They were meeting in a warehouse.

Because it wasn’t fucking cliché enough.

Mobsters and muscled security and drivers and some people who were just redundant bodies standing around in an old warehouse, floor dusty and smelling of dog shit, no windows and people carrying torches and shining light around the emptiness with the screens of the phones.

It wasn’t a bad idea, really.

There was no surveillance this far out of the lights of the city, and the police didn’t scout the area often enough on a Sunday night, normally where they’d find kids smoking weed and using the empty space for a rave or just to drink cheap, stolen liquor. Instead Jian Yi knew they’d be driving down the roads where the bars were or where the new gay club on Beijing East Road had opened up, pulling cars over on the streets that were playing music too loud and made the streetlamps flicker with the thrum and the walls of the buildings shake.

So they were safe from that, by all accounts. They could meet, and talk, and talk about the international smuggling and shipment of heroin without too much difficulty.

The guy was a Kuwaiti, a Sikh expat from India, and spoke decent Chinese.

Jian Yi was mildly curious about his background, but he didn’t ask.

They didn’t shake hands, because this wasn’t a business merger where they sat in offices and waved their dicks around and talked about how much money they earned per annum. Instead it was kind of dirty and they couldn’t see each other very well but the guy’s turban was a flame orange and Jian Yi was pale enough that he knew there was probably a slight glow around them. Everyone else wore black, huddled behind the light, in the darkness.

‘So you Jian’s son,’ he said. He was nameless, but knew Jian Yi’s name. Jian Yi thought this was pretty unfair but wasn’t that interested in asking, and his voice was soothing which Jian Yi could not decide was a good thing.

‘You want fifty-four kilograms?’ Jian Yi said.

The man laughed. It echoed around the warehouse, brought to their attention how small their little party was as they stood in the middle of it, no flap of bird wings, just human vocals bouncing of metal and settling in the cracks of the silence that fell afterwards.

‘Yes, you his son,’ he said, amused.

‘You asked for me specifically,’ Jian Yi said. ‘I’m sorry the rest of the group were unable to cater to your needs and negotiate with you themselves.’

‘I was interested in you.’

‘Apologies, but I’m not particularly interested in you. I have plans.’

Zhengxi, specifically. He’d either have gone to his apartment, maybe stayed there, or he’d have wandered in and saw it was empty and walked straight back out. Jian Yi wasn’t sure which one he wanted – whether he wanted him to be there when (if) he got back, watching as Zhengxi only looked at him which was harsher than asking where he’d been and Jian Yi knew he would feel like throwing up after all this was over.

‘You said I didn’t have to do this, Feng. Two years. Two _fucking_ years and I was yours.’

‘It was out of my hands, Jian Yi. We wouldn’t get the deal otherwise and… I’m losing power fast.’ Which was to say that he was losing men on his side fast. Men who Jian Yi’s father had appointed.

He hadn’t thought he’d ever been this _angry_.

He’d stared at Feng in the car, a forty-something boulder of a man who still looked surprisingly young given his kind of work. Feng hadn’t been able to keep his gaze long – never had. Said it was too much like looking at a quieter, stiller version of his father, and Jian Yi read that only as the shamed guilt of failure.

Jian Yi thought about the men standing behind him now, the ones who’d cut his back, and Feng cleaned him up with burning salves and bandages. The ones who blasted horns and laughed and wouldn’t let him sleep, and Feng had taken him for a drive in the nights just so he could curl up on the back seat.

He wondered how many of the ones left behind him were his father’s, which he knew to be not many, and how many were not, which he knew to be a lot. He wondered, too, what that meant for him. They were just as likely to shoot him in the head if they got a chance as they were of shooting the Kuwaiti’s men.

The guy nodded. ‘Of course you have plans. Young pretty man like you. Busy busy.’

Jian Yi ignored that, even if he didn’t think the guy meant what he’d actually said. ‘You should understand by now that this won’t be easy and that I’m not speaking with, like, arrogance or _false modesty_ when I say this.’

‘I know.’

‘By which I also mean that my men and I take no responsibility for this transaction once you’ve left Chinese airspace. We can get you out. We can’t get you in.’

‘I will deal with Kuwaitis.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Is there another way?’

‘Take a boat. Don’t try and get through customs. Sail into Bahrain and cut through the border.’

‘Not enough time for that.’

‘You have men at your disposal who won’t mind being hanged if they’re found?’

‘Everyone dies. Better to die for risk of money.’

Jian Yi hesitated, then shrugged. It wasn’t his problem. He couldn’t think about the sentimentality of the whole thing when the men were watching him like that. Couldn’t see his face but they were _watching_.

‘You’ll lose more than men if you’re caught.’

‘You think the catchers cannot be bribed, Jian. If the Chinese can, and the Singaporeans can, then I am sure the Kuwaitis will buckle too.’

‘You smuggled into Singapore.’

‘It was almost… fun.’

‘Right,’ Jian Yi said. He didn’t think the man had chosen the right word there, but his tone was weirdly jovial for a midnight meeting about getting fifty kilograms of smack into an Arabian state that rewarded handlers of narcotics with death.

The man was carrying something that looked like a briefcase, and Feng stepped in front of Jian Yi as he kneeled down to open it, because it wasn’t the first time someone had just pulled a gun on him - even if only because he was his father’s son.

It turned out that it was only papers; copies of emails and photographs and evasive contact details.

‘This is how we did Singapore. I want same thing. But control of Chinese border control is in your _capable hands_.’ He said this like he enjoyed the phrase, like he had to emphasise it to be sure they’d heard it.

Feng took the sheets from him, and stepped back to Jian Yi’s side.

Jian Yi was frowning. ‘We’ll do our best to comply, but if something that worked before will not work now, we’ll change it. There’ll be no negotiation of that. You follow our terms or we don’t work together.’

‘You will lose a very valuable customer.’

‘You’re not a customer,’ Jian Yi said. He could feel the men shifting behind him. They’d set him up with small meetings in Russia, to see how he fared. Never liked how he did it, watching him with narrowed eyes, the way he spoke to people like he didn’t care and didn’t respect the things he stood for, but they were confused with the idea that he stood for them. Hadn’t been thrown into this. That he had had a choice. ‘We don’t work that way. No one is that valuable to us.’

The man scratched his chin, covered in a thick beard that might have been grey, but in the dark looked black. ‘Very well,’ he said, not really sounding too concerned, but Jian Yi knew how to sound indifferent when he wanted to, so he wasn’t sure he if he was convinced. ‘I thinking you don’t use your own plane.’

Jian Yi shook his head, didn’t want to know how the man knew of his father’s aircraft. ‘Private planes are more heavily searched; they’re more suspect for that kind of thing. Easier to shove it on a commercial tin can.’

Jian Yi asked next, if he had an end date in mind.

‘Muslim Kuwaitis celebrate Mohammed’s birthday on third October. Many staff official take a holiday.’

Jian Yi tried to count the numbers in his head, but, mostly, it was blank. ‘That’s in two weeks,’ he said. _Less_.

‘You cannot do it?’

‘It’s in two weeks.’

‘That is shame.’

Jian Yi gritted his teeth. ‘You’ll pay us extra for arrangement with our own border staff. They won’t be able to file the documentation this quickly. We’ll never get the money wired paid to them with the correct tax process. It’ll never get through customs.’

‘I’ll—’

‘Pay extra.’

‘Jian Yi,’ Feng said, low, quiet. Jian Yi hated it when he did that, an overbearing parent watching his child fuck up and having to step in. He wished, somewhat perversely, that he had Zhengxi with him. Or, perhaps better, He Tian. They’d know what to do. They always knew what to do more than him; knew how to jump over the fence at school because they didn’t _feel_ like school that day, knew where to climb to look out over the city and feel like a small, stupid god. As a kid he’d just cried and needed someone to take his hand when things were shit, and sometimes he felt like that now even if he wasn’t allowed to.

But the man said, ‘Okay. If it takes it, we pay extra.’

And Jian Yi nodded. Because he’d been doing this for nearly three years and he wasn’t a fucking child and if they wanted him to do this then he’d fucking _do_ it. And two weeks was great. Because it was only two weeks of lying to Zhengxi about where he was – at a friend’s from high school who didn’t exist when he was making payment to border control and checking that stacks of heroin were secured tightly among building materials and synthetic padding for mattresses and pillows and bulk packs of children’s sweets. 

It would have to be staggered, too. Couldn’t all go at once. And he’d have to sit in the car park at the airport for the day, maybe have a spiced latte in the Starbucks – it would be October; they’d have the autumn specials out, right? – and wait until the planes had taken off.

‘You wanted to discuss anything else?’ Jian Yi said.

‘I pay you now?’

For a moment, he was confused. Did he think this was a cash settlement? Like he had thirty million yuan in his little briefcase?

‘No,’ Feng said, stepping forward. ‘Our accountants will be in touch.’

‘Accounts,’ he said, almost scoffing. ‘You have teams and I have me.’

‘You’ll be the connected passenger to Kuwait?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I go earlier. See that it arrives safely. My name not be related to those shipments.’

‘You don’t want to see the stock?’ Jian Yi said. He’d had men and women before who liked to have a taste. Run their finger over it and stick their face up close and _inhale_. Others who just stood off and glanced and had someone do it. Others who just signed (didn’t really sign; couldn’t have that sort of paper work) and things were over fairly quickly. He liked those sorts. Had the comfort of knowing he probably wouldn’t have to see them again and the next time they did business it would probably be over Skype.

His smile was almost kind, and Jian wondered how well he had known his father. ‘I trust you, Jian,’ he said, buttoning up the knitted cardigan he wore, like he was going to fucking church. ‘ _Sarbat da bhala_.’

And Jian Yi nodded, let the men steer him back to the car. _Don’t say that until you’ve escaped the noose_ , Jian Yi thought.

 

* * *

 

Zhengxi shouldn’t have been disappointed that night when the evening grew dark and Jian Yi wasn’t there when he said he would be. The air had that sort of feel to it – the hush of autumn pressing in and a chill frost tempting the window panes; roads growing quieter and office lights shutting off earlier in the towering city buildings he could see from Jian Yi’s living room, but this did not mean that the lights darkened completely, or that the city ever became slow, just that everything gathered a muted quality to its chest and let silences lengthen and leaves cling to windshields to remind people that they were dying now and would be gone soon.

He’d turned up to his empty apartment – Jian Yi gave him a key the first week. He half-expected Jian Yi to be lying on the sofa, passed out with drool streaking down his chin as he slept and hadn’t realised the time, phone glowing silently with all his missed calls.

But no. The lights were on beneath the cupboard in a pale glow and it was empty. This should have worried him, concerned him, but he’d gone to sleep shaking with the memory of that look on Jian Yi’s face – had it really been him? – and was almost glad that he wasn’t there just so he got to be somewhere that was his and reminded him of all that was him, but didn’t actually have him in it.

Zhengxi patted Abel, waiting at the door, on the head. They sat together and flicked through the channels and he fed her half the black bean beef that he found in the fridge and knew, because it was pretty good, that Jian Yi hadn’t cooked it himself.

He wiped his fingers in his t-shirt and sipped at a can of coke that tasted flat and of metal and that reminded him of blood and cut gums. Jian Yi’s exercise books and a stack of textbooks were strewn about the kitchen and living area, scraps of paper filling up the dining table, laptop flashing quietly in the dark. During the adverts for diamond rings and cars he wandered over and flicked through it all, the scrawled mess that covered it all, the stains on his textbooks that Zhengxi knew he’d be charged for because who would spill fucking Yunnan coffee over school property but him?

The writing was small, like it didn’t want to be there, shoved in the margins and the lines of the characters all bending unintelligibly into each another. Zhengxi didn’t think that he used to write like this, with a kind of nervous fervour, like his hand shook, pencil snapped a couple of times, like his arm was shaking with the desperation to get the words down before he forgot. They were only tiny things: an address in Nanjing somewhere, some irrelevant fact about the CPC he’d probably put as the opening line of an essay, food he needed to buy and that Zhengxi knew he hadn’t (cupboards still bare, fridge humming cold light onto a pack of coke and old tubs of takeaway noodles), all squashed into pages of notes and essays that Zhengxi hoped he didn’t hand in with his scribbles.

Zhengxi passed his fingers over the words, felt the grooves in the paper from the pressure of it.

Maybe he should have left, he thought again. Maybe he should have been more concerned because he didn’t really know where the fuck Jian Yi was. Maybe he should have thought about the fact that he was like a ghost wandering through an apartment of someone who might not even be in China anymore, even though his passport was in a drawer in the side table by the front door and he hadn’t taken the stack of signed manhwa that Zhengxi had looked after when he left the first time. Really, none of this meant anything, and Zhengxi let his eyes run around the place with its white walls and expensive furniture and didn’t really _feel_ much to think about it.

He sat back on the sofa and carried on watching TV.

It got to 2 AM when he flicked channels, lights off, Abel curled up against radiator in the hallway that seeped warm air into a too-big space so it never got quite warm enough. Jian Yi could have walked in any minute, and maybe his TV was monitored, but he flicked anyway.

He kept it on mute, just watched bodies and skin writhing on the screen, weird and hazy in the darkness of the room, glowing like it was a sort of neon sign for the forbidden. He could see the bleary coloured lines of the screen, that quiet hum of electricity as the light reached outwards, made hands static with energy, caught in silent ‘o’s and the curl of dark hair and a friction that was maybe lost in the mute button.

His thumb hovered over it on the remote, but he didn’t press it. Instead he let his other hand move, under his tshirt, down his chest, brushing with hands that were cold and wet from another can of coke that may his teeth feel fuzzy and still made him thirsty. He brushed over his stomach, the muscled ridges of it, and then down, didn’t realise he was that _hard_ until he gripped himself and let out something like a sob, clenched his jaw so tight he thought he’d break his teeth.

He hadn’t done this in weeks. Hadn’t let him touch himself since Jian Yi turned up and there wasn’t a girl in his bed to stroke him while he put his head between her wet thighs and pretended he couldn’t taste her or hear her and it was just a part of the exchange.

It was slow, at first, because he ached with it and it made him tremble to go too fast, neck craning over the back of the sofa, feet pressed so hard into the wooden flooring he could feel them ready to cramp, everything stilled and tense and coiled just to feel the slow heat and the thrum of something that felt like cold and heat at the same time, neck flushing, chest wet with sweat and making his t-shirt stick to him, bodies arching in a silent, melancholic ecstasy on the TV and god if Jian Yi was here right now he could be on his fucking knees with his mouth open and gaping and _ready_ and—

_Fuck._

He let go of himself, hands held away from him, palms up, like they couldn’t be trusted.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he asked himself, on Jian Yi’s sofa, jacking himself off to cheap porn where the makeup had slid off in the first five minutes and the guys kept mouthing, ‘Oh, yeah,’ and the girls said, ‘Mmm,’ even in the silence, because that was apparently all they were fucking capable of.

Where was the complexity? Why did they have a fucking spotlight on them that made the shadows washed and made their skin too bright and their eyes weren’t even glazed as they stared right at the camera just to make sure they were ‘engaging’ so they got their fucking pay check.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he said again. Stood up, wiped his hand down the front of his jeans, unbuttoned, not really hiding anything.

He turned off the TV, loitered in the darkness of the apartment, aching and trembling with cold sweat and the edge he hung on and—

_Fuck—_

Lurched into Jian Yi’s bedroom where his t-shirt was on the bed and he pressed it to his face and inhaled – vanilla shampoo and something sugar sweet and sex – barely even got his hand back around himself and—

And—

And—

And—

He saw _galaxies._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149713225024/aphorism-xv-a-19-days-fanfic


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149759233924/aphorism-xvi-a-19-days-fanfic

They had dinner together, with his mother, because He Tian thought that was maybe the best (all?) he could do right then. He caught Guan Shan giving him looks across the table, a tiny wooden slab of a thing that threaten to buckle beneath everything He Tian could carry from the Fujian restaurant near his apartment.

It was a kind of awkward affair: Guan Shan’s mother passing looks between them like she expected one to launch themselves at the other. But she was otherwise quiet and maybe a little stunned that someone had just brought them food to their little table, and He Tian kept giving Guan Shan more and couldn’t help watching him eat. 

 _How primal_ , he thought to himself, but only the way one might distantly regard something – not with any real aversion or disgust. Maybe even a small amount of dark satisfaction.

‘You shouldn’t have done this,’ Guan Shan had told him, lips almost pressed to his ear in a low murmur as they stood in the kitchen. At his own apartment, He Tian had almost felt some embarrassment that he sought every possible reason for being pressed up against his back, hands on his waist sometimes, but here it was small enough that he could do it with nothing holding him back other than Guan Shan’s mother sitting around the corner in the living area. Even that didn’t bother him much.

‘I wanted to,’ He Tian said quietly, getting bowls that were chipped and scratched and worn from an otherwise empty cupboard. ‘For last time. And for all the times you cooked for me.’

‘You paid me to cook for you. That’s not something you pay back.’

‘Still.’

‘And buying food from a restaurant is not cooking.’

He faced him, with a dry smile, and said, ‘I didn’t just ask you over so I could look at you.’

He watched him fall quiet, red flush creeping up the back of his neck. Crockery in one hand, he put the other on his skin, felt the heat of it beneath his hand, the softness of his hair as it crept up the back of his head. The dye was fading now, the colour of rust, or a burnished sort of sunset, and He Tian wondered if he’d ever see it dark and natural, and if he wanted to.

‘We should take this out,’ he muttered. ‘Ma probably thinks you’ve stabbed me.’

‘She thinks I’m the violent one?’

And Guan Shan just gave him a _look_.

* * *

‘Ah-Shan tells me you work in the city, He Tian.’

Guan Shan shifted, jaw working slowly as he ate. He Tian nodded. ‘I do. My brother runs a security firm. It was my father’s, but my brother has most of the responsibility now he’s in his thirties.’

‘Computer security?’ she said.

‘Sometimes. Or physical. Or monetary. It’s a very… catch-all enterprise.’

She nodded and said, ‘You must have a lot of staff.’

There was something hanging about the table when she said this, and they all knew, Guan Shan most of all, that it was a remark for him. Wondering why he hadn’t got a job. Why he didn’t work with He Tian if he could. Why, quietly, he thought that his happiness deserved to be less so long as she had hers.

‘Ma,’ Guan Shan said. ‘I’m sure He Tian didn’t come here to talk about work. We shouldn’t spoil the food.’

‘Of course,’ she said, ducking her head. It was a gesture of modest apology, of embarrassment, but He Tian could tell she was neither. Her eyes were too sharp where Guan Shan’s could sometimes slip into a helpless softness that He Tian saw rarely and spent too long looking for; searching for. The problem was that Guan Shan wore a very similar look when he was hurt or confused, and He Tian knew that sometimes he used to – still did – hurt him or confuse him just to see it, because it was usually the closest thing he had to pretending they were sharing something deeper than cigarette smoke, plum-coloured bruises on pale skin, and a door clicking shut that echoed with disquiet and an anxious, inward sort of hatred.

After dinner he and Guan Shan went into his room, knees touching on the bed. He Tian sat at the top, propped up on the pillows, and Guan Shan with his back against the window, the slowing light seeping through the windows and, for a few minutes between the stark light and the muted dusk, the profile of him was lit up like he was the sun soaring low in its sunset.

For a while they sat there, and He Tian watched him and he looked away like he didn’t know he was being watched – ‘You’re too intense sometimes,’ he’d say, words thick and shaking. ‘I can’t – can’t _deal_ with it.’

He was holding a notebook in his lap, legs crossed, pen spinning fast between his fingers. The bed was barely wide enough but He Tian kept his legs outstretched, skirting the edge of it, pressing close against Guan Shan’s knees.

They could hear Guan Shan’s mother through the closed door; humming as she did the washing up in a bowl set on the table (wouldn’t let them no matter how many times Guan Shan told her to just _let him do it_ ), and someone in the apartment above was screaming at kids who were screaming and He Tian could hear it but wasn’t really listening. The room seemed trapped in some small moment between time, hovering between the last few breaths of sunlight, the day having given all it could and no more.

‘We should get started,’ Guan Shan said, and He Tian blinked, the hanging stupor jilted, surprised that Guan Shan would be the one to start. Didn’t think he’d be the one to initiate reaching out for something.

‘Sure,’ He Tian said, and he pulled himself up so he wasn’t slouching, because he could lie like that and watch him all night but it was a bit uncomfortable and he wanted Guan Shan to think his focus was on him for the _right_ reasons. 

Right? No. _Appropriate_.

‘I guess I should ask what kind of job you want to apply for,’ He Tian said. ‘There’s no point in me asking you questions on how to be a mechanic if you want to be a greengrocer.’

‘I don’t want to be either.’

‘Good start.’

‘He Tian—’

‘I’m serious,’ he said, even if he didn’t want to interrupt him when he was saying _his_ name and _god_ he was done for. Where had this _thing_ come from? This thing that had planted itself inside him in middle school like ivy and crept and crept around his lungs and his heart and his head until he couldn’t breath and think and couldn’t have blood thumping in him unless he saw him and heard his voice and – and messed with him. Hurt him. Said things he didn’t mean and maybe did. Why couldn’t he have liked someone less like him? Someone less… Someone less.

‘He Tian?’

_Say it again._

‘Sorry. I meant that it was good. You’re ruling out what you don’t want to be. That’s good.’

‘I don’t want to be a chef.’

‘You don’t?’ He Tian asked. For some reason, this did not surprise him, but he didn’t quite know why, probably because he knew that he didn’t love it.

‘No,’ he said. His was slouching and the curve of his back was pressed against the window sill and He Tian thought that it probably hurt a bit. ‘That was – that was my old man’s dream. I’m good at it because I had to be for my ma and because it was money. Not because I wanted to follow in his footsteps. You know?’

‘Yeah,’ He Tian said. (He didn’t; it wouldn’t hurt to pretend.)

‘And, like, it carries with it something I used to be, you know? The kid running around the kitchens at the restaurant while his old man – his dad…’

Silence.

‘We can do this another time,’ He Tian said softly. He wanted to ask, wanted to make him rip into himself and tell him all that he was keeping hidden just so He Tian might complete the puzzle and give him everything he could that was _appropriate_. But he didn’t because it would be cruel and he was learning to tell the difference between cruelty and false kindness.

‘No,’ Guan Shan said. And then he breathed. ‘I think maybe I’d like to teach. Like. Babies. Not humans – not _teenagers._ And not actually teaching maths or whatever, but the early stuff. Playgroups. Youth groups. I’m not that good with other people. You wouldn’t have to be careful with them in the same way.’

‘You’re good with me.’

‘I’m shit with you,’ he said, and looked at him closely. The light, still faint, made rings around his eyes. ‘Maybe you’re shit with other people too.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Middle school,’ he said, easily, like he’d been thinking about it for a while. ‘You spent all that time playing up to other people’s expectations – other people’s impressions of you. As if all of that wasn’t some, fuck, some _vainglorious_ attempt at recognition and adoration. But in the end you went home to an empty apartment and the best you could do for company was me because none of the rest of it was real. I think that’s pretty fucking sad, don’t you think?’

‘Not really,’ He Tian said, shrugging. ‘What was the point of them if I got to be with you at the end of it?’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Why not? Don’t like it when I acknowledge that I actually feel things sometimes?’

‘Because you being with me – what we were – it wasn’t nice. You knew it.’

‘You never said no. Never pushed me away. Because I would have. Stopped. Left.’

‘I’m not blaming you. I just think – I think we weren’t good for each other. We didn’t want it.’

‘I knew what I wanted.’

‘I didn’t.’

He Tian didn’t know what he wanted to do with this information, this revelation. Why he was even telling him this now. What was he supposed to do about it? Couldn’t pretend like he hadn’t bitten his throat tight enough to draw blood sometimes. Couldn’t pretend like they hadn’t bloomed bruises across their backs from dug-in heels and hard wooden floors. Couldn’t pretend like, sometimes, He Tian hadn’t turned the light on and pushed him against the glass panes of the windows along the walls and whispered in his ear that someone might be watching them even if he realised now that Guan Shan liked the intimacy and the _privacy_ of sex. Didn’t like being on show; didn’t like the brutality of it that He Tian had always made it. Always assumed that what he wanted was what everyone else wanted too.

‘Why would you be good working with kids?’ He Tian asked, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, and he’d come here for a reason and didn’t want it to end like every other time they seemed to part, sharp words lingering like acid rain evaporating off tarmac.

‘I think – I think because I can explain the basics to them. They’re not, like, judging how well you _explain_ things because they’re just learning, learning everything new. And I like that newness. Being able to impart that knowledge on others. Kind of sacred, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ He Tian said, this time really trying not to look at him; watching him _and_ listening to him when he said things like that was a disaster for a heart that was straining so hard already against the wire-like vines. ‘Carry on.’

‘I guess because I’m active. I think I’d be good at PE and sports groups and whatever. I think because I know what things in life are kind of good and what’s bad and I’d be able to give them the best of the good and keep them away from the bad. I think because every kid’s different, aren’t they? They’re quiet and they’re loud and some of them don’t shut up but it’s kind of fascinating to watch them grasp what they realise they can use and really _use_ it and not care who’s listening. And I’d like to listen to them. Encourage them. Let them know that someone actually _is_ listening for once and… yeah.’

He Tian swallowed. ‘Don’t say I think,’ was all he could say.

‘What?’

‘Don’t say you _think._ It’s unconvincing. You need to be… firm of your convictions or whatever. If you don’t believe in yourself, why would an interviewer believe what you had to say?’

‘I guess.’

‘You don’t have experience working with kids,’ He Tian said. ‘You didn’t write that on your CV.’

‘I haven’t—haven’t had the time. I want to apply to some programmes. Get a diploma. It’s just my ma…’

‘Can probably do more than you think. _I_ think you don’t give her enough credit. You see her as this missing half without your father and you think that you have to fill it. You don’t see that maybe she’s whole already.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I don’t. But I’m betting it’s true and I think she’d hate that you held yourself back for her.’ He glanced through the blinds. The sky seemed grey now, flushed a light pink where the sun had kissed it as it left. ‘If you lived me with me… It would be easier. There’s space there. She’s closer in the city where it’s easier to move about. She could go to the parks without you having to take her. She could have her friends over for book club and cover the whole fucking place in flowers. I wouldn’t mind.’

‘You don’t know what you’re offering, He Tian. It’s not—’

‘Think about it. Please. I want – I want you to have everything.’

‘I don’t need everything.’

‘You deserve it.’

‘Why? Because you like me? Because I’m only worth something when someone wants me?’

‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ He Tian said. Because it _was_ stupid, and Guan Shan looked like he knew it but would still argue it if he could. Just for the sheer hell of it.

‘You know if you didn’t like it you could leave,’ He Tian said. ‘You’d never even have to say goodbye.’

‘I’m not _that_ fucking rude.’

He Tian felt himself smile at that, at the scowl on his face, the plasters on his fingers from forgetting that He Tian’s knives were much sharper because he’d cut himself twice that week when he came over and cooked. They hadn’t really done much but eat and watch TV and maybe breathe into each other’s necks while their hands reached desperately for one another in the dark glow.

‘Write me another CV,’ He Tian said. He’d scribbled over the one Guan Shan had given him in the week with lowered and eyes and a jutting, jerky shake of his wrist. _There_ , it said. _Just take it, would you?_ ‘Say you work part-time as a personal caterer because you basically do. Put all your grades on it. Put what societies you were in or extra curricular activity you did. Bulk it up with small responsibilities that showed you were interactive and made an effort.’

‘You act like I actually did all that shit.’

‘You didn’t just swear at people in the halls, Guan Shan,’ he said, rolling his eyes. He Tian thought he probably liked being _difficult_ sometimes. ‘You played basketball. You were deputy class rep in high school.’

‘Because the homeroom teacher pulled names out of a pencil pot.’

‘Does it matter?’

He sighed and said, ‘Fine.’ He reached over, taking the CV, then rolling onto his knees so he could put it on top of the book stack. His shirt rose a bit, and He Tian saw the burn mark of a cigarette and the expanse of skin and the faint ghost of his ribs pressing against his torso.

When he sat back, this time, he didn’t look away from He Tian’s stare. Did nothing but turn the lamp off at the floor by the bed and draw his lower lip between his teeth.

‘So,’ He Tian said. ‘Can I stay here tonight?’

He asked it because he was aware of the size of the bed and how it had probably been Guan Shan’s since he was six years old and how it would feel pressed against each other now they were past being teenagers, shuddering, trying to keep quiet because it wasn’t He Tian’s apartment where everything was on offer and easily taken. This was cramped spaces and something slightly stale and, almost, it made He Tian feel trapped. But he liked it because it was Guan Shan’s, and that would probably always be enough.

Guan Shan swallowed, like he’d known the question was coming at some point but hadn’t really wanted to think about the idea of it in real words, in his mouth, his voice. ‘My ma…’

‘Won’t mind,’ He Tian said, with a confidence that was full but entirely unfounded. He didn’t know what Guan Shan’s mother thought of him and didn’t care. What she thought of them. He thought she was probably smart enough to have at least _noticed_. Thought she was probably kind enough to not have made a comment by now.

Guan Shan nodded, an uncertain thing, like that was all he needed to change his mind. He clambered to his feet and found He Tian a t-shirt and pair of loose bottoms that ended up sitting probably a little too low on his hips (as if he minded when Guan Shan kept glancing and looking away like he hadn’t had his hand slick and tight around his dick a few nights ago. Maybe it was just because he kept thinking about it, the way He Tian’s breath had hitched in his throat with a kind of strangled gasp as he’d shuddered and let his head fall on his shoulder, hot breath on his neck, a quiet, breathy ‘ _Fuck_ ’ to fill the silence afterwards).

They changed and brushed their teeth; He Tian had brought his own toothbrush because he liked to be prepared and Guan Shan didn’t understand why he hadn’t brought his own clothes to sleep in then, _idiot_. But he’d said it with that kind of quiet smugness that said he liked He Tian wearing his clothes and, really, didn’t mind if he forgot again.

He Tian climbed into the bed next to him, thin blanket pulled over themselves until their legs were twisted in each other’s and if either of them moved they’d be kissing, eyelashes caught. He Tian put a hand in his stomach, skin hot beneath the old shirt he wore.

Guan Shan shook his head. ‘I don’t want to,’ he said, and He Tian could feel the quiet tremble muscles beneath his hand.

‘Okay,’ he said, instead found Guan Shan’s hand, let his finger wrap around his wrist so he could feel the thrum of blood through his veins.

Guan Shan swallowed. ‘Can we— Can we kiss?’ he said. His voice was barely a tremble of notes. ‘Just kiss?’

‘Yeah,’ He Tian said. They could do that. He was capable of something like that.

Guan Shan nodded. He put a hand out, put it on the side of his face, and He Tian could feel how it shook. Guan Shan leaned forward, and then stopped, breath on He Tian’s face, like he was waiting.

He realised that Guan Shan thought he’d move. Like he’d probably lean forward and roll him onto his back and just take control, but he didn’t. He waited, and when Guan Shan leaned forwards and put his lips on He Tian’s, barely moving, it was the softest thing he thought he’d ever felt.

He didn’t move his mouth much, just parted his lips, put some pressure against him so he didn’t feel like a statue.

For a while he thought maybe Guan Shan would grow bored, get tired, maybe be harsher and use his tongue and bite He Tian’s lip, move to his throat and the shadowed underside of his jaw. But he didn’t.

And it was sweet. And they didn’t move for hours, and their lips didn’t even get sore, and they could barely even taste each other.

It was the kind of moment that He Tian thought, if it came natural to him, would have made him cry at the softness of it, like lying on a roof top when the sky is warm as if you can feel the distant heat of the stars pressing down on you, and the cicadas are loud, but they’re the only sound other than your breathing. Wasn’t like they heard the kids screaming outside and doors slamming and someone singing in the shower.

It was gentle, and not what He Tian was used to – not what he’d ever given him – and he wondered if this is where it all came from; what it all came down to. Just the way they kissed, just the way they could move without aching and the purpling of skin under pressure and without anything feeling kind of _wrong_.

It was, He Tian thought, when eventually Guan Shan made a noise and He Tian realised with some small amusement and not a small amount of fondness that he’d fallen asleep with his lips on his, unfathomably pure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149759233924/aphorism-xvi-a-19-days-fanfic


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149804189644/aphorism-xvii-a-19-days-fanfic

‘Thirteen.’

‘Yeah.’

‘From Latvia.’

‘Basically.’

‘You have her identity records?’

‘I have a passport copy when she came over. No visa, though. It expired last year.’

‘He knows she’s here illegally?’

‘From what I can gather. He uses a second mobile phone to contact her. Gives her money sometimes.’

He Tian glanced around the room. The men and women, really, looked rather stunned. To be honest, he sort of had been too. Didn’t think the guy was _really_ that much of a… Of a he didn’t know what. Thought maybe they’d get him for illegal music downloads or stealing a bag of rice from the supermarket or not paying his taxes. Hadn’t thought it would be… _this_.

‘So we have statutory rape,’ his brother said, ‘and paying for sexual services.’

He Tian nodded. ‘Basically.’

‘So… A death penalty is not outside of the remit of possibility.’

‘Not without some pressure.’

‘That can be easily applied,’ one guy muttered. He wore glasses and wrote with a pen that probably had his name on, and He Tian could tell from that alone that he was a lawyer.

‘You’ll prosecute?’ He Tian said.

‘Of course,’ the lawyer said, using a sort of tone that said it wouldn’t be about moral representation and a clean conscience. He Tian could see the newspapers now, praising the company’s diligence in protecting the rights of the underprivileged. Good press.

‘And the girl?’ He Tian said.

His brother exchanged looks with the men and women around the table, in their pressed suits and expensive shoes and the way they got to sit in an office looking out at a city where all the shit he’d just been talking them through really happened. They were blissfully distant from it, and He Tian supposed that from this height they all thought that executive power came with some sort of godliness, too.

‘She’ll be deported,’ his brother said eventually. ‘It’s not our responsibility to provide care for her.’

‘You could at least, I don’t know, find a European community somewhere that might help her reapply for a visa?’

His brother sighed. ‘Can you have a look at something in HR, Wen Jing?

A tall, sharpish-looking woman nodded. ‘I’ll see what we can do.’

His brother looked back at him. ‘This doesn’t mean I’m making promises, Tian Ti.’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to,’ He Tian said. ‘But at least you would’ve tried, yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ his brother said, and He Tian found it odd that for once he was showing some sort of concern for someone else, while his brother… didn’t really care? When had that happened?

_When this became your distraction and his business._

‘What of his ex-wife?’ a guy from PR asked. He wore turquoise glasses and a handkerchief in his blazer pocket that matched. ‘I understand she wanted charges brought against him, but, I mean, capital punishment is a little different. If she sues us for acting against what she’s paying it’ll be a shit storm once the guy’s dead.’

‘I don’t think she’ll care,’ He Tian said. ‘She was angry enough that she became kind of apathetic. If she found out he’d been fucking a thirteen-year-old girl, she’s probably happy about the turn of events.’

There was a collective satisfaction spreading around the table, some shrugs, some raised eyebrows, but no one seemed particularly objective. He Tian quietly marvelled at the distance they all managed to create here; how far they were from seeing a job as something that was real; they were puzzle pieces: the scorned ex-wife, the immoral husband, the girl like a chess piece between it all. Evidence.

‘We’ll do what needs to be done,’ said He Tian’s brother. ‘And thank you for your hard work, Tian Ti. It’s been invaluable.’

He Tian shrugged. Didn’t like the public approval; it said a little too much about him if he showed he wanted it. Didn’t say enough if he didn’t show anything.

The lawyers took the case from there, and the PR department would manage the press release of the company’s work, because this wouldn’t be small, and then they left. Job done, case closed. It left with it a closely pressing silence in the room, like it was waiting to be filled.

‘You’ve done well, Tian Ti,’ his brother said. He was shuffling papers together, sliding the report He Tian had made back in its folder, along with that first surveillance image that had started it all. The flash of pale skin, a craning head, eyes that were too round and too wide to be what it should have been. ‘Really well.’

‘Careful,’ He Tian said, watching as the men and women in suits disappeared through the door like a chessboard pieces spilling over themselves. ‘Keep complimenting me and I might get ideas.’

His brother rolled his eyes. ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘I guess you’ll need something else to do now.’

‘Another psycho ex-husband?’

‘No,’ his brother said. He wore a look that was fully of thought and scrutiny, and He Tian did not like being on the end of it. ‘I think something else. Something, what was it you said, something more serious?’

‘You know I didn’t mean that when I said it.’

‘I know. But it wasn’t quite grand enough for you, was it?’

‘Was that your way of saying I’m avaricious?’

‘It’s my way of saying you’ve proven yourself more than capable. We work on a reward-based system here, Tian Ti.’

‘Do I get a gold star?’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ he said, but not with any spite. And then: ‘I want you to work on a criminal case. I’d like to see what you can do.’

‘Criminal?’

‘The MSS have asked us to look into some local gang activity. They think it might be connected to something wider.’

‘Something wider?’

‘They’re looking into a global case of international smuggling from out of China.’.

‘Of people?

‘No – drugs. ‘

His mind should not have gone to Jian Yi. But it did. And he wasn’t sure why.

‘Triad?’

‘Possibly. MSS only want us to look at local drug activity. But there’s always a main supplier. If we look at where the local gangs are getting they’re product, we should be able to trace it back, or at least give MSS a foothold somewhere.’

‘You’ve worked for the cartel before. I know you have.’

‘Do you?’

‘In middle school. You were at Jian Yi’s place.’

‘Was I?’

He Tian gritted his teeth. ‘Won’t this impact negatively on your… relations with those organisations?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He Tian shook his head, because his brother could be a fucking _bastard_ sometimes. Wanted him to get involved but didn’t want to give him everything. Selective in a way that put He Tian under his control, and also made He Tian want to hit him.

‘I know where I need to tread, Tian Ti,’ his brother said. It was enigmatic and admitted more than he probably should have let it.

He Tian remembered that night; seeing his brother’s shadow outside Jian Yi’s apartment. The set of his shoulders, the way he’d narrowed his eyes at him. Jian Yi and Zhan shaking outside Jian Yi’s front door. Guan Shan down the street, almost like he had been waiting.

Later that night, his brother would say that he was just worried about He Tian being there, but He Tian thought that his brother probably would have done a lot in that moment if He Tian had somehow jeopardised him, and it was that… _willingness_ that He Tian sometimes found unsettling. A willingness to do anything if he thought it needed to be done. He’d say his relationships ended because of work, and he’d spend conversations with people while staring at his phone, but He Tian thought it was more than that. It was the quiet purr of an automatic engine roaring and taking control of itself as it went, refusing to stop for anything. Even, probably, if He Tian stood in the middle of the road, headlights casting him in a glow.

‘Is it joint police work?’ He Tian asked him now, because he wasn’t getting anything more from him, and because it wasn’t uncommon that the police asked for privatised assistance; He Tian knew that his brother never turned down an opportunity to be an upstanding citizen for the papers.

‘Not this time. The Nanjing Police Department doesn’t have contacts like we do. They don’t always have enough equipment or manpower, either. It’s easier for us to blend in.’

‘And you want me to do what?’

‘Same as last time. Emails and phone calls and CCTV. No one can escape cameras, not matter how important they are or what they’re trying to hide from.’

‘Will you be planting someone?’

‘Like a narc?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Not this time. Local gangs aren’t so… private. They don’t hide in shadows like the Triad. They’re a little less cautious, for some reason, a little more sure of themselves. They deal in the streets and pull out cleavers on each other at festivals. Fucking idiots.’ He paused, lost in some quiet moment of consideration. ‘Not,’ he said, ‘that you shouldn’t be careful. They’re arrogant in their violence. They don’t keep it quiet because they want to boast. I don’t want you getting in their way other than what you can do here behind a hidden computer network.’

‘I’m not stupid enough to infiltrate a fucking drug ring.’

‘Maybe,’ his brother said. ‘But sometimes you look for excitement in all the wrong places.’

The truth of that weighed on him, because he knew he used to jump fences at school for a reason. Knew he crashed his car once, had it written off, because he wanted to see how much it could take. Knew he’d jumped off cliffs in Krabi during his junior year summer break because he wanted to see what would happen when he hit the water. Not, of course, because he hoped for anything darker, more final. He’d just wanted to see would _happen_.

‘I won’t disappoint you,’ He Tian told his brother.

‘I’m not… You don’t disappoint me. I just don’t want you getting killed.’

‘I think I’ll be okay.’

‘Sure. I trust you,’ he said, and He Tian wanted to tell him he shouldn’t, because that was a big, rather permanent burden to put on someone, and he couldn’t trust himself _not_ to forget that in the pursuit of something. Not even forgetting – he had more responsibility than that – just putting up a middle finger at anyone else’s expectations of him.

Except, maybe, for one person. One person he didn’t want to keep disappointing. One person he kept holding himself back for, pulling on the strings that might otherwise lead them to some sort of tragic ruin.

‘I’ll have everything brought to you on Monday,’ his brother said, flicking through his phone as he stood up. He Tian stood too, buttoning together his suit jacket. ‘You’ll monitor one area of the city. I have some other surveillants who will do the other areas. I want you to meet every morning to discuss your work.

‘Sure.’

‘Tian Ti,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you so much. I’m happy you asked me for work here.’

‘Wait until I fuck something up and then tell me that.’

His brother passed him a dry smile as they headed to the doorway. ‘You won’t.’

‘You underestimate my ability to ruin a good thing.’

‘You underestimate your ability to be a decent person when you know it really matters.’

He Tian did not agree with this, but he did not have good answer to give otherwise, so he just said, ‘We’ll see.’

 

* * *

 

ARE YOU AVOIDING ME?

The text, as it was, had been unanswered for three days. Which was to say that, yes, he probably was.

Jian Yi had written out ten different responses, clogging up his drafts folder, each one different: some sharply defensive, others loosely apologetic, a few enigmatic and promising an explanation soon. That last one he didn’t even believe as he saved it and didn’t send it.

His thumbs hovered over the screen now, but he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until this was done, this useless waiting. Sitting in an airport that ebbed and flowed with tourists and exchange students and football teams and old couples leaning on each other and the odd, lonesome traveller.

He’d had three pumpkin pie frappuccinos, had to walk around departures a couple of times to work off the sugar rush and the other feeling of hesitation that he knew was nothing but nerves, but nothing could prompt him to hit the send button until this was all finished with and he could stop telling Zhengxi that he was playing basketball or working late at high school and not be lying.

October had hit him like a bomb, and it had been two weeks of paper work and harsh phone calls and harsher threats. Surreptitious money wiring between bank accounts, the clipping of a security pass to a lapel, the stacking of bundles of smack, nestled between packs of children’s sweets that were obnoxiously bright. He’d met Zhengxi a few times, walked Abel around the neighbourhood of his apartment, but there was something off about it. He knew, partly – mostly – that it was his fault. But he thought also that there was something else. The worst part was that he couldn’t even afford to care at the moment. Couldn’t get distracted by _feelings_ when someone might end up dead if he wasn’t careful. And he feared more that it would be Zhengxi more than he feared that it would be himself.

‘Are we keeping you from something?’

Jian Yi glanced up. He sat around a table sticky with spilled cream and coffee and the rubbish from empty sugar packets. Feng sat beside him, and the man known as Zhao sat across from him. He was a scrawny guy with a watery smile, head shaved, steadily approaching his thirties with no amount of grace. He had a twitch in his left eye that Jian Yi liked to watch just to annoy him, and he had been responsible for a number of the scars across his back.

‘Yeah, actually,’ Jian Yi said. ‘Now shut the fuck up and don’t talk to me.’

He shrugged. ‘You used to be nicer,’ he said. ‘I liked it when you used to cry.’

He heard a snort from behind him, another table with a pair of innocuous looking members. Probably, they shouldn’t have all been sitting together, but the thing about airports was that no one stayed too long to notice anything, in a state of constant movement, never expected to sit too long. They’d paid a girl to come through Arrivals once the planes had taken off, posing as Feng’s daughter, just in case security were watching them through their cameras.

Jian Yi clenched his jaw at the guys behind him, at Zhao’s feeble, murky grin.

For the next half an hour he kept his eyes on the departure board as it switched from Check-in to Gate Open. And then Feng jerked suddenly. Leaned forward in his seat.

‘Fuck.’

Jian Yi glanced up from his phone, text still unanswered, stared at the board.

_Delayed._

‘Phone the security guy we hired,’ Jian Yi said. ‘Now.’

Feng already had the phone pressed to his ear. They waited as the call connected, and no one was passing around nasty smiles anymore or sharing memories that Jian Yi found to be anything but fond. Feng leaned forward in his seat and put an arm on the table, and they breathed a collective sigh as Feng gave a nod when the guy on the other end had picked up.

‘It’s me,’ Feng said. ‘What’s going on?

There was muffled speaking, Feng didn’t nod or make a sound. Just listened.

‘And how long will that take?’

More speaking, tinny voices warbled through the speaker.

Feng hung up without saying goodbye, and said, ‘Strikes in Abu Dhabi means the planes can’t fly through their airspace with no air control to direct them. Nothing to worry about, he said. It’s a staggered delay since this morning.’

‘And they couldn’t have told us this fucking _yesterday_?’

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Jian Yi said.

‘Sure. Because it doesn’t matter that one of the planes with twenty-five kilos of smack is just sitting on the fucking _runway_.’

Jian Yi gave Zhao an unimpressed look. He hadn’t even kept his voice that low. ‘You’re boring,’ he said, and then he turned to Feng. ‘Did he say if there were problems with security?’

‘Didn’t say, which is to say that it should have been fine. If it wasn’t we’ll be having words.’

‘Hmm,’ Jian Yi said, not really interested in how those words might be structured in a sentence.

In the end, the planes left and Feng didn’t receive anything but a text that said ‘OK’, and Jian Yi barely suppressed rolling his eyes as a twenty-something girl wearing a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses walked through the Arrivals with her arms wide open and said, ‘ _Daddy_!’ and Feng hugged her back and looked like he was about to have a coronary.

Jian Yi didn’t say goodbye to them after that, just headed to the taxi stand to take him back to the apartment (knew that he’d probably end up blurting out Zhengxi’s address because that was what he really wanted and that was probably what the decent thing to do would be).

But Feng caught up with him as he opened the door, pulled him to the side before he could slide in and be as far away from it all as possible. He’d said he’d get the stock on the plane and out of Chinese airspace, and the money had already been transferred to the group’s accounts. His part was finished. Which was why he didn’t really _appreciate_ Feng touching his arm and pulling him over like he was kid having a tantrum who needed talking to.

‘Fuck off, Feng.’

‘Just give me a minute,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to you. Couldn’t do it in there.’

‘Your little girl’s all grown up now, Feng. You can probably say what you want in front of her.’

‘Shut up,’ Feng said. ‘It’s not the woman I’m talking about. It’s the others.’

‘Keeping secrets from your friends?’

Feng just shook his head, ran a hand across his face that looked scarred and weathered since the first time they’d met.

‘Look, Jian Yi,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to scare you but… If something _happens_ to me, I want you to get out, okay?’

‘Happens,’ Jian Yi said.

‘The last few guys your dad hired haven’t been seen a while. I’m the last one of his original team. I figured I should warn you.’

‘Because…?’

‘Because I’m the last one here who gives the slightest shit about you and the others won’t hesitate to get their hands on you once I’m out of the way if they think you have your dad’s account numbers and locations memorised.’

‘Thanks. I really felt your compassion towards me there.’

He made an irritated sound, looked like he was gritting his teeth _hard._ ‘Would you be serious for one goddamned minute of your life, you little shit? I’m talking about me being offed here, all right? I’m not fucking joking about.’

‘I heard you, Feng. You die, I leave. It’s not complicated.’

Feng stared at him, almost reared back. Just let his mouth open and close. And then he said, slowly, ‘You are _not_ the same kid we picked up three years ago.’

Jian Yi blinked at him. ‘Is that a fucking surprise? You fucking—’

‘You _know_ I never agreed with it.’

‘Oh for god’s sake,’ Jian Yi spat. ‘Stop with the pathetic excuses. What are you, five? _It wasn’t me, sir!_ I don’t give a fuck what you did or didn’t do. You were there. You were one of them. That does not fucking _excuse_ you from the shit they did to me, all right?’

‘Jian Yi, you know I couldn’t—’

‘Couldn’t what? Lift a finger without them turning on you? I was _sixteen_ , Feng. Shoved into whorehouses and fucking _bear fights_ and against molten iron stamps expected to negotiate while I watched. While it happened to me. You’re a fucking coward.’

He looked down, said in a low voice, ‘Your father wanted me to look after his business. He also wanted me to look after you. This was the best I could do.’

‘The best you could do?’ Jian Yi said. ‘Then your best is fucking shit.’ He pulled the taxi door back open, ignored the look the driver gave him for messing about. ‘Thanks for the heads up on your kill, by the way. I’ll put a flower on your grave if they give you one.’

They drove off, and he didn’t give the driver Zhengxi’s address in the end – didn’t know what address he gave.

Knew, only, that he was losing his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149804189644/aphorism-xvii-a-19-days-fanfic


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149839162664/aphorism-xviii-a-19-days-fanfic

‘Who’s putting a smile like that on your face?’ 

‘No one.’ 

‘Hmm,’ his ma said. ’Whoever they are, you stick with them, all right? You deserve to be given a smile like that.’ 

‘Sure, Ma,’ he said, flippant but feeling his heart do something funny, and when he glanced up from his phone she was still looking at him. A kind of searching look, like, in front of her eyes, the puzzle pieces that he was made of were slowly shifting and rearranging themselves, and she was still trying to catch up with who he was becoming. He put his phone down, the wry text He Tian had sent unanswered, and turned to her. ‘Ma, I wanted to speak with you about something.’ 

‘Always listening,’ she said. 

‘It’s about He Tian.’ 

He didn’t miss the way she paused, thinking about something, and he wondered what it was. ’Okay?’ 

‘It’s just that… He lives in this fucking huge apartment in town and… He wondered if, maybe, we wanted to go and live with him for a while?’ 

She frowned. ’Live with him?’ 

‘Yeah,’ he said. ’’Cause this place is kind of small and it might be better to be further in town while I try and look for a job and stuff.  And it’s bigger – it would make things easier for you.’ 

‘Ah-Shan,’ she sighed. ’I know he’s your friend but we can’t go around taking handouts from people—’ 

‘It’s not a handout, Ma. He keeps asking me. He wants us there. He’s been alone for years. And it’s his uncle’s place – he’s not paying to live there anyway.’ 

‘Then I doubt his uncle would be happy letting some strays in.’ 

He didn’t know what to say for a minute.  _Strays_. One thing to say it yourself, another to let your son believe it.  

‘That’s not what it would be. There are classes near his apartment that I wanted to go to. And—and we wouldn’t have to pay rent so it won’t even be a problem to get your meds anymore. And you could invite the women from book club around and you could tell Huai that we got lucky.’ 

She smiled, a little, but her mouth was tight and lined and her eyes were hooded. ’It doesn’t seem right, Guan Shan… What would we even do with this place?’ 

‘Leave it. You’ve always hated it.’ 

‘That’s not true, Shan Tze. Me and your dad started a family here. There were lots of good memories here.’ 

‘Doesn’t mean you have to cling to the foundations they were made on, Ma. We’ve had enough time here. Too much. This could be good for us.’ 

Really, he didn’t know why he was trying to convince her, as if he’d been on board with it the whole time. Maybe it was because, slowly, he was beginning to see the opportunity in it. Visualise the clean floorboards and the open kitchen that meant his mother could sit there and watch him cook and didn’t have to talk to him through a stained wall. 

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. Guan Shan stood and headed into the kitchen to get a glass of water, her voice hushed over the sound of running water. ’But that’s not a yes. All right?’ 

‘I think we’d be happy there,’ he said, kept his voice light as he stood there, glass full, overflowing, hands wet now. 

‘We’re happy here.’ 

He could not bring it upon himself to lie to her right then. To tell her how  _unhappy_ this place made him. She thought he was happy because that’s what she’d wanted to see, and as he got older he began to realise where his ma’s faults lay. So long as she saw, maybe, what she wanted to, and so long as she accepted the face value of what someone gave her, then that was all she’d ever needed. She did it with Huai from book club. Did it with the lies his old man used to tell her about how everything was fine. Did it with him, when he said that he was _happy_. 

Because she saw the cuts on him, saw the bruises and the wet eyes and the way he wouldn’t talk back when he was stupid and getting involved with things he shouldn’t, but it hadn’t matched with what he’d  _told_  her; the way he’d smile with busted lips and tell her that it was all  _okay_ and he was  _handling_ it. And, god, she’d really just nodded and said okay, hadn’t she?

‘It’s not about that anymore, Ma,’ he told her, shutting off the tap and heading back in. ‘There’s more to it now than just… Oh my god. _Ma_!’ 

Everything in his head, for a moment, went static.

 

* * *

 

Later he would remember that the glass smashed and he got shards in his bare feet, leaving bloody footprints across the floor that, god, would be such a  _pain_ to get out. 

Later he would look at the bruises on his knee caps and remember how, distantly, it almost felt like they’d shattered as he fell against the chair she sat in and put his hands and tried to stop her shaking and the doctors only said to call if it lasted more than three minutes but this felt like eternity and  _fuck_  guidelines. 

Later he would remember how his voice had sounded, hoarse, desperate like a fucking child’s as he tried to speak to her and the person at the other end of the phone who told him to just tell them all he could and had it been enough? 

Later he would remember the ambulance, how one of the paramedics pulled the glass out his feet and soaked them in something that he should have felt stinging. He remembered how it had been cold, because the windows were down and the fold-down seat had smelled like cigarettes, and maybe he should call He Tian. Because this had happened before, and he’d been on his own, and he’d remembered looking at the tubes coming out of her mouth and it had been years ago and he remembered going to school the next day, wondering what someone like He Tian would do, and he’d seen him and kissed him and it had been awful and he remembered trembling and throwing up in the school bathroom and it had been too much.  

But later, he would wonder if he needed something like that now, watching the doctors’ hands drift over his mother’s frame and her legs and had they always been that thin? Had she always been that fucking  _fragile_? He watched them put the tubes back in like he was fifteen again and watching through a screen that was spotted with dust and grease from people’s faces pressed up against the glass. Watched as they started putting needles in her and as the noise of her heart punctured the tension in the room while someone stood next to him and asked him questions that he couldn’t remember answering properly. 

Had she taken her medication that morning? He didn’t know. Has she eaten or drunk anything or taken any other pain killers or anti-inflammatories? Maybe. He couldn’t remember. Has this happened recently? A couple of months ago but it was short and she’d been alone and said just felt tired after. Are you okay? Not really. Do you want me to call anyone? Who? 

Later, she would stabilise, and the doctors would say she had to have surgery because there’d been a build-up of cerebral fluid in her spine and it was causing infection her nerves and did you understand what I said, Guan Shan? 

‘Sure. I heard you.’ 

‘She’ll be here a couple of days. Maybe a week. You should go home and get some rest. It’s been a long day for you.’ 

‘It has?’  

And he remembered how hospitals could do that. Those weird, liminal spaces that always had the pale lights shivering and there were people all the time and everyone was awake and the machines didn’t stop droning. Nothing, really, to say what time it was and whether the sun had risen and fallen like lungs or whether the leaves on the trees were still drying and dying, veins pressing against the brittle skin of darkening, chilling nature. And the feel of the place was still the same as he remembered, a kind of heat that didn’t leave, thick smell of sickness blowing through the air conditioning that didn’t change. 

Guan Shan almost wished he smoked so he could go outside for a cigarette and breathe in a different kind of air.  

Eventually she was asleep, separated by twenty other people in the room by a curtain, and in the seconds where she’d been awake her words had been garbled and full of morphine and he didn’t think she recognised him, and he wiped at the spit on her chin with his sleeve. 

‘We can’t let you stay here, Mo Guan Shan,’ said one of the nurses. ‘We don’t have the space or the facilities. Why don’t you go and get a bag of her things and then you can come back and fill in the documentation?’ 

He did. Grabbed a taxi that was humming in the chill October air and did what someone told him to do for once.

The apartment was empty and cold because they’d left the windows open and there was still blood and water soaking into the carpet. He swept up the bits of glass and it made his hands bleed because he was never fucking  _careful_. He put some clothes and a toothbrush and hair brush in a duffel bag that used to be his old man’s. He put in some books for reading and books for pressing and knew that he’d visit every day with flowers because they’d die easily in the hospital with false light and too much air and she’d probably like the immediacy of it; having to get them in the paper, trimming the leaves and the petals before nature caught them in its tight, illusive grasp. 

He rode his bike back to the hospital but it was dark and he didn’t have a helmet, and it happened more than once that a car would swerve into him when the pavement disappeared and blast their horn until his ears rang with the sound. He didn’t have a chain so he left it leaning against the wall and wouldn’t be surprised if it was gone when he came back out just so someone could sell the metal from it.

He went to the administration desk first in the A&E department, where the papers were waiting and the figures stared up at him. The questions were easy because he’d been filling out his mother’s prescription for years and keeping a record of her notes from the doctors’ because they didn’t always keep those for her. But the figures that looked at him were not. Easy, that is. 

‘Excuse me?’ he said. ‘Is this right?’ 

Behind the screen, a large woman looked up, dark red lips and a whiskery face, glasses on the end of her nose that were barely held there with a beaded string.  

‘Costs were based on your mother’s stay in the hospital, the medication we’ll provide her when she’s discharged, and based on the surgery.’ 

‘And you factored in her disability compensations? Our income?’ 

She moved her computer screen around. The screen in front of her was more of a metal mesh, so he couldn’t see clearly. But that was his address. His mother’s medical notes. It was all there. 

He nodded when she looked at him with a look of dry expectation. 

‘I can’t… I don’t have that sort of money,’ he said eventually, full of a kind of  _shame_ that he hated he should feel. Nearly tacked an ‘I’m sorry’ on the end as if that would count for something. 

‘We can set up a staggered payment plan. Interest free.’ 

‘And how much will that cost?’ 

‘It’s up to you. The limit is five hundred a week, but you can pay more if you have the money.’ 

He felt his heart hammering. Felt it like it was a sickness, like this place was making him ill with all the people that walked past, bloodied and bruised and smelling of unclean skin and vomit. His skin felt itchy and he needed a shower. Couldn’t believe he was having to thinking about fucking  _money_ when his ma lay in a hospital bed with scratchy, faded sheets and she couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom and someone he didn’t know would be putting their hands on her so she could get in her chair and what if they did it wrong? What if they hurt her?  

‘Do I have to pay something now?’ 

‘We start plans on the first of the month. That should give you about three weeks to make arrangements.’ 

That innocuous ‘make arrangements’, to him, meant more than she probably thought it did. Because he didn’t have a job; it wasn’t like he could wait for some sort of savings bond to cash in. It wasn’t like he could contact some rich grandparents from Shanghai and wait for them to wire him money. He tried to remember the last time this had happened, but he had been fifteen and they probably wouldn’t have had to do anything if she had a disability and he was still struggling through school. He’d have to… What, end the lease on the apartment? There wasn’t anything he could sell. Not paying rent would help a little. And go where? He Tian’s? With no fall back? Because now he had to be real and couldn’t get caught up in the idea and the  _dream_ of it like he had with his ma. 

What was he going to do when this was over? When He Tian finally got bored of him because he’d always been fickle and hard to entertain, hard to hold his interest. What would happen if he took He Tian up on all the things he offered, the apartment he said he and his ma could come and live in?

It wasn’t really pride and a chip on his shoulder that kept him from saying yes. Really, it had never been about that. From jumping onto everything he promised like it was the last train out of a city about to be walled in.  

It was about knowing that one day He Tian would ask him to leave, and Guan Shan would have made a home out of him and be made homeless. 

‘We have some leaflets for more information,’ the woman said. ‘Have a read through those. You might find some options in there that suit you.’ 

He hated that he had to take one, like it was admitting something. ‘Do I have to sign this now?’ 

‘No, you can complete the payment forms when your mother is discharged.’ 

He nodded. Scrawled a signature that didn’t really look like his anymore, muttered a thanks. 

It was when he started moving towards the doors to the hospital wards that he saw the hazy shadow of a figure standing, in the corner of his eye, and not moving. 

He glanced at the man. In his thirties, or maybe a bad end to his twenties. He carried an arm in a sling and had blood down the front of a white t-shirt. His smile was a mix of yellow and gold teeth, and it was the tattoo that filled an arm and crept up his neck that Guan Shan remembered most. Black ink. Nothing more. Just blocked-in colour that circled neatly around his wrist and around his neck like a collar. Guan Shan remembered him getting it, the way he’d smiled through it all, because you could get tigers and dragons and flowers and scaled koi. But, really, what said more than darkness coating your skin? 

‘Red,’ he said, when Guan Shan had stopped and the duffle had slipped from his fingers and he thought that, kind of embarrassingly, he might be sick. 

‘Dai Lin,’ he said, because he wasn’t sure what else he could say other than his name. Didn’t think he’d ever have to say it again. 

‘How’ve you been, kid?’ he said. ‘How’ve you been?’ He took a step forward, put a hand on his shoulder just once, like he used to. Before. Guan Shan had never found it so hard to stay still before – not to retaliate and move away from it. Not to run. Force himself to just take it.  

He smelled of cigarettes – the cheap ones, not the expensive menthol ones that He Tian smoked and he’d almost started to like the smell of. The taste of. 

‘Fine,’ he said, tongue like lead. ‘I thought you were still…’ 

‘Nah,’ Dai Lin said, grinning, rolling his shoulders back like he was unloading some sort of shackled weight. Relishing the freedom of it all. ‘Let me out on good behaviour, if you know what I mean.’ 

Guan Shan eyed the blood, the cast arm that he held to his chest in a sling, the tattoo that was gathering glances from the people waiting to be seen. ‘They didn’t pin you with…?’ 

‘Nah. Just grievous bodily harm. Fancy word, eh?’ 

Guan Shan swallowed. He was taller than Dai Lin. Remembered how had he looked up at him in middle school, as he started looking down when he got to high school and actually got to see him. Talk to him. He wished, as a kid, he had been less trusting sometimes. Less willing to go along with what people wanted him to do. Fighting at school because the others expected him to do that. Letting He Tian drag him with an arm around his neck because eventually he couldn’t fight him. Not, maybe, that he regretted that last one now. But he wished he’d put up a higher defence. Maybe He Tian would have been better to him. Treated him more like something that would stand up and fight and not something he could wait for to snap. 

‘What happened to your arm?’ Guan Shan asked, because Dai Lin was watching him, and there was something waiting quietly behind the easy set of his shoulders and the smile that was like a wolf’s.  

He Tian watched him a lot, but it was interest and infatuation and made him feel hot and sometimes reminded him that he was sort of wanted. But Dai Lin’s look was a sly thing, full of waiting, of expectation, looking for loopholes and him to lower his guard. Not interested in seeing what Guan Shan would do or how he would react to something, like He Tian, but interested in seeing what he could  _use_. 

‘You know me. Always bumping into shit.’ 

‘Yeah,’ Guan Shan said quietly. He knew him. Wished he didn’t. ‘You should be careful.’ 

There was a pause where he seemed to consider if Guan Shan’s words had been a kind of threat, which Guan Shan found kind of laughable. What the hell could he bring to the table anymore that might be taken as a valid defence? He had exactly nothing to back up any threat with, and it was an emptiness that was almost frightening. Maybe, he thought, it was one of the reasons he wanted to be a part of it, because it was belonging to something, it was bodies at your back who acted like they gave a shit about you because of a colour you wore around your arm or on your wrist. And the thing was, he still wore the band on his, still wore it not because he wanted it, or because it was some moral reminder of wrongdoing and punishment, but because it reminded him of what it used to be like when people would cover you no matter what you did because they were  _with_ you.  

And Guan Shan, really, had never been with them. Hadn’t always stuck up for them because sometimes what they did wasn’t right even if it was a part of their code, and because if he ever fucked up so bad for  _them_  he didn’t think he could trust them to look after his ma. He thought that Dai Lin was probably looking at him now and remembering all of that. How he had run when the police came. How he hadn’t sold them out but hadn’t defended them either. How he got community service and they got prison sentences and he’d been the only one not to pull out a knife. 

‘I’d tell you to be careful as well but you’re looking pretty good,’ Dai Lin said. ‘Not even a single cut. Which makes me wonder why you’re here.’ 

Guan Shan swallowed. ‘My—my ma…’ 

‘Ah shit, man, shit,’ he said, scratching his head, shaved and making a grating sound like sandpaper as he ran his nails across it. For a minute he had sounded sincere. ‘Forgot she had issues. Must make you tight on cash, eh?’ 

‘We get by.’ 

‘Yeah,’ he said, with a kind of assuming grin that Guan Shan always thought felt like being skinned. ‘Not a very fun world still, is it?’ 

‘No,’ Guan Shan muttered. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Dai Lin, but I need to take my ma some things from home. She could be here a while.’ 

‘Sure, man, sure,’ he said, giving him a pat on the shoulder that made him tense and ache with a dull, familiar kind of fear. He stepped aside to let him pass, but he didn’t let go of his shoulder, and he only moved enough that his mouth, if he leaned forward, if he stood closer, would be level with his ear. ‘Look, Red. If you ever think about getting your colours again, we’d welcome you with open arms. After everything, you’re still like family to us.’ 

‘I’m not—’ 

‘It’s good money. Would pay for your ma ten times over. You could do it on your terms, no sweat no sweat. No need to make you do what you don’t want to. Just think it over, yeah? Think it over.’ 

‘Sure,’ Guan Shan said, with a tired kind of sigh, because Dai Lin had never taken a no. He’d rather hear an excuse, which, Guan Shan thought, played to his particular kind of arrogance. ‘I’ll think it over.’ 

And he stepped back, smile wide, one free arm wider, like he was about to deliver a sermon, like he was Mao appealing to the peasantry. ‘Awesome,’ he said. ‘That’s awesome, Red.’ 

‘It’s not Red anymore. It’s just Guan Shan.’ 

But a look passed over his eyes, and it was dark, and it was exactly as Guan Shan remembered. Said that Dai Lin remembered everything too. ‘You’ll always be Red to us, kid,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget who named you.’ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149839162664/aphorism-xviii-a-19-days-fanfic


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149930625144/aphorism-xix-a-19-days-fanfic

Zhengxi knew that he liked watching people fuck on TV. Knew that he was too familiar with the shortcut of the ‘Incognito’ tab on his laptop. He knew that perfume adverts had always quietly fascinated him, and the movement of bodies in music videos always held something that was mildly hypnotic in the dark, outside shopping malls, on the billboards at the train station. None of this was to say that he found it erotic, or, rather, that he was attracted to it. The interest lay instead in the shiver of flesh, the opening of a mouth, the shadow of a hipbone.

He had once, he remembered, watched a two-hour porn compilation of people having an orgasm. He’d been sitting at his desk in his room at home, and his sister kept coming in and asking if he’d play video games. (‘Not right now. I’m doing school work.’) And the whole time he’d just watched, slouched in his chair, arms crossed, lower back hurting like hell because his posture was usually pretty good.

He probably could have made himself come if he’d wanted to, but it wouldn’t really have been the video, which, he knew, was only ever really an attempt for people to squint really hard and pretend that one of those writhing bodies was themselves. 

People came when they watched because of how they put things in their head, how they reacted to what they saw and rearranged it. Maybe they were holding the paddle. Maybe they had the remote in their hand. Maybe they were the one in the ropes. Maybe they were ruined on dirty bed sheets. Maybe, even, they were the one sitting in the corner of the room and watching, their eyes where, instead, the camera might have been.

Zhengxi also knew that, in the convenience store on the corner of the street where his apartment was, there was an Indian woman sold magazines from Australia that were for men and didn’t have women on the cover. Which is to say that Zhengxi bought one folded up in a newspaper and didn’t look at her when she gave him his change and when he got back to his apartment he flicked through the pages and didn’t even get hard.

‘This is fucking bullshit,’ he said to himself, magazine in the bin, hands on his face as he lay flat on his back on the bed. Why, for _god’s_ sake, could this not be _simple_? This was a question he’d been asking himself for a while – for years, really. It changed context often enough: Why did Jian Yi do that? Why did those men come for him when he was fifteen? Why did he sit in his apartment and do what he’d done when Jian Yi wasn’t there?

The answer, unlike the context, was always the same:

 _Because it’s Jian Yi_.

And was that not, he thought, the most profound, all-encompassing description of his life? Ever?

He realised this at some point between the time he threw the magazine away and the door opened of its own accord and Jian Yi, who he had not seen or heard from for days, uniform ruffled because school was more important than him now, walked in.

Zhengxi sat up. ‘You’re fucking kidding me,’ he said.

And Jian Yi, the fucker, looked _sheepish_. ‘Sorry,’ he said, with a flippant ease that almost made Zhengxi want to stand up and throttle him and shake him until his face purpled because did he _know_ what he was doing to him?

It was dark outside and his lamp was lit dimly so it made Jian Yi’s face looked blocked in with black and white, and Zhengxi saw, behind that look – some mix of guilt and apology and wry amusement and maybe something darker that he could not bring to the forefront – that maybe he had meant it. Because, unlike the Jian Yi he used to know, the one that was full of spontaneity, the one that did things just because he found them funny or because he wanted to try it, even, sometimes, if he hurt himself – if he hurt others – that this Jian Yi did not seem the same. His laugh, sometimes, sounded different. He was sharper and his fingers were longer and his pale eyes had a darkness in them that had maybe always been there, but that Zhengxi had never really thought about with any seriousness. Maybe he should have. Maybe it had been naïve and hopeful to think that he would stay as he was.

This Jian Yi did things, now, because he’d thought about doing them. Chose his words because he knew how they’d be received. Looked at things because he wanted them to know he was looking at them. There was an unbearable sort of purpose to him now. One of his classes at Nanjing was on the first scholars of physics, and they looked at Aristotle, who thought that everything had an end goal that explained the existence of stars and the movement of things and the human intention – a _telos_. A reason for something existing. Jian Yi seemed now to be like that. Compliant, in a way, with the world’s rules. Not so unpredictable like a comet fallen out of its orbit.

Zhengxi thought that maybe he’d liked that one more – the before version. The unpredictable one. But this Jian Yi made him feel strange and looking at him brought something new with it. Maybe it was because he was older, and that change had happened while they were a part, a gradual thing that they never got to share. But maybe it was something else.

‘You’re not going to tell me what you’ve been doing,’ Zhengxi said. This was not a question.

‘You don’t want me to lie,’ Jian Yi said, the same thing he’d said the night he came back.

‘You can’t tell me but you won’t lie to me.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Is there any point to this then?’

‘What?’

‘Is there any point in this? In us? Because this isn’t how I want to do things anymore.’

Jian Yi was staring, smile gone, the flippancy replaced with something tense and sharp like a knife edge. The silence, in the room, was profound. ‘Excuse me?’ he said. ‘ _You_ don’t do want to do this? You think I’m doing this so I can keep secrets? So I can enjoy the fact that I know something you don’t? I don’t tell you things because I’m trying to keep you _safe_.’

‘And you don’t think I should get to that to you? You don’t think I’m the one who should protect _you_ for once, you dumb shit?’

‘I don’t need protecting, Zhengxi.’

Zhengxi scoffed. ‘Oh, _sure_. I forget that you’ve got a fucking _mob_ at your back.’

Jian Yi looked down, said in a small voice, ‘It’s not a mob.’

‘No? What should I call it then? An illicit organization? Use the politically fucking correct term?’

‘That’s not—’

‘I can’t fucking believe you’re defending this. I can’t fucking believe that you’re going along with this like you don’t have a fucking choice—’

‘I _don’t_ have a choice,’ Jian Yi said, disbelief colouring his tone. ‘I _never_ had a choice.’

Zhengxi gritted his teeth. He wanted to stand, didn’t like that there was this distance and this change in perspective, Jian Yi standing, him sitting. But he didn’t think he could handle that sort of closeness right now. Everything felt live, like electricity wires.

He said, ‘Don’t you fucking _dare_ absolve yourself of responsibility, Jian Yi, because as far as I can see I think you _like_ it.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘You do. You like the thrill, I bet. You like that it draws attention to yourself. Just like being friends with He Tian in school. You like that, after everything, you’re somehow closer to your father. You like that you’re _chosen_.’

He thought he’d argue, spit back, but instead Jian Yi looked at him with a strange sort of disquiet. It made him feel small, trapped in a specimen in a jar to be watched and considered. ‘No, Zhengxi,’ Jian Yi said, voice still that same weird quietness that was not a little unnerving. ‘I don’t like it. I never liked it and I never wanted it and the only reason I still do what they want is because of you.’

‘Don’t you dare pin this on me. What twisted fucking part of you made me think I want you—’

‘That’s not it. That’s not what this is about.’

‘No? Then tell me why you’re—’

‘Because they said they’d _kill_ you,’ he said.

Silence.

And, for _so_ long, Zhengxi didn’t know what to say. Because he hadn’t – hadn’t expected him to – what did he say? The inside of his head had never felt so muted, like something had gone a way for a while. Everything, suddenly, was making sense.

‘You said I was safe,’ he said eventually, because that was perhaps the only thing he could, and the words sounded remarkably hollow.

‘You are. Because my – my following them – my doing what they want – that’s the insurance. That’s part of the deal.’

His words were so stilted, so strained, like they were being tugged and pulled from him like a tube from his throat. It was almost painful to hear.

Zhengxi swallowed. ‘And you… Yout thought that selling yourself for me was somehow smething I’d be happy with—’

‘I’m not selling myself,’ he cut in, features pulled in on themselves so they were shadowed and dark and agonised. ‘Don’t make me sound like that. And, frankly, I don’t give a shit about whether or not you’re happy. You’re alive. You’re healthy. That’s what matters to me.’

There was something, still, slightly blurred around the edges of his words – of _him._

‘What else?’ Zhengxi said.

‘What?’

‘What else is there? What else aren’t you telling me, Jian Yi? Huh? _What_ fucking _else_?’

‘You’ll hate me.’

And – and it was _so_ small, _so_ quiet, and suddenly, Zhengxi was six again. Watching as some women who didn’t look like Jian Yi dropped him off at school, and he watched him be so alone, watched him with that stupid flower around his head (he’d looked pretty stupid himself too – thought this every time he looked at the photo tucked in his desk drawer), and he remembered Jian Yi’s voice when he’d asked if he was lonely, and he’d said, ‘A little,’ because he was only serious, only told the truth when it really mattered.

But this time didn’t feel like that. Maybe it was because they were older. Maybe because they’d grown older and not together. Maybe it was because Jian Yi had built something uo around himself that meant he couldn’t be reached. Maybe he didn’t want to.

‘Tell me anyway,’ he said.

What else could he say? Couldn’t say yes. Yes, I’ll hate you. Not because he wouldn’t know that until afterwards, but because, despite everything, he could never bring himself to do it.

And, the thing was, when your life had revolved only ever around one person, how could you not be a little bit in love with them?

Jian Yi came over, sat on the end of his bed, which didn’t really put much distance between them when Zhengxi was already sitting cross-legged, back straight, in the middle of his bed. Jian Yi sat slouched and hunched over like hwaas curling into himself, bracing himself.

This close, Zhengxi could see the tiny of specs of dust that drufted around the air, around his face as he moved. He could see how the light from the lamp made his lashes look golden, made his eyes burng like they were molten. This close, Zhengxi could see how his lower lip was slightly cracked, how the circles under his eyes looked like bruises, how his cheeks were a little hollow and made him look beautiful in the gaunt, waifish way the he’d always had about him. A sort of weightlessness. How he was still, a month later, thin, and that made Zhengxi feel like he had failed him somehow.

‘Two years,’ he said, and his voice had that absent quality to it.

‘Two years,’ Zhengxi echoed, a prompt, not a question, not matter how much he wanted it answered, because he could see what this kind of revelation, this subdued, clandestine imparting of secrets was doing to him.

‘They said I could come back for two years before I had to leave with them again.’

Zhengxi paused. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘They—the clients my father’s group serves… They don’t trust them while he’s still in prison. They won’t do business if he’s not there. It’s why they wanted me. Because if my dad’s not there, then his flesh and blood is the next best thing, right?’ He swallowed, throat dry enough that it made a clicking sound. ‘When they first came—They wouldn’t let me say goodbye. Wouldn’t let me stay in highschool. Stay here. With you. And I was such a—such a pain in the ass to them. Fought everything. Ran away when I could. Nearly killed me a few times because I just wasn’t worth the hassle.’

‘Two years.’

‘I said—I said I’d do everything they wanted, but they had to give me two years. Let me fast track through highschool. Let me be with you. Let me finish being a kid properly.’

Zhengxi took in the sharpness of his face, the length of his hands that were still bigger than his. He took in the uniform, the wrinkled blazer and creased shirt, the smile that was actually really fucking _sad_. Zhengxi thought that, really, Jian Yi had not been a kid for a long time.

‘When were you going to tell me?’ he said. ‘Were you just going to _leave_ again?’

‘Zhengxi—’

‘Were you going to _tell_ me?’ he said again, desperate, for some reason. He was imaging it happening, the way Jian Yi had come and would have messed everything up again, and then just _going_ , leaving a vague, person-shaped hole in his life that he probably wouldn’t have figured out how to fill. Because the last time he thought he had. Thought he’d put it to one side, filled it with university and gaming and girls kneeling between his legs. But he realised now that, actually, he hadn’t; he’d just covered it with a thin tarpaulin sheet that was worn and getting rotten from all the rain and probably would have caved in at some point.

‘No,’ Jian Yi said, and it was almost a relief to hear the honesty for once even if it made Zhengxi feel sick. ‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘You selfish fuck.’

‘Don’t. You don’t know what I’ve—I knew that if I said goodbye I’d never leave. And if I never left then—then you would be—’

‘And you think _you_ got to decide that for me? You think you had a _say_ in that?’

Some awful part of him was wishing that he’d never come back. That he would never have had to rearrange his life for Jian Yi, because he _always_ needed more space than anything ever allowed for. Always took up so much more room. Claustrophobic and destructive, sometimes, as a monsoon.

But he didn’t tell him that, because he also knew that it wasn’t really true, and that he’d rather him chaotic and so _present_ than not there at all.

‘It’s not selfish wanting you to be alive. That’s never selfish. And they knew, really, that if they ever—ever _hurt_ you and you weren’t _here_ then they’d… they’d never have me again.’

Zhengxi didn’t want to think about what that might mean, about how fucking messed up it was, about how ruined he probably thought he was when he knew that he’d likely do the same. Almost, in that first year he’d been gone, dark and unbelievably cold, had.

‘Why did you—If you thought they wouldn’t hurt me, then why did you still do what they said? Why are you doing it now?’

Jian Yi made a kind of choking noise, and his lip was shaking, eyed red and wet, hidden behind his hand, always so ashamed to be crying.

‘Because I didn’t want to take the risk. Ever. I love—I love you too fucking much and it’s killing me.’

Zhengxi told him that he loved him too. Even if he hadn’t figured that bit out yet. Even if it wasn’t the same, but maybe could be.

And Jian Yi cried at that, because maybe he heard that – the lacking, the potential, the promise of it.

‘I fucking hate this,’ Jian Yi said, heel of his palms pressed into his eyes, hard enough that he probably saw stars. And Zhengxi told him that he hated it too.

 

* * *

 

He made them food afterwards.

Which was to say he microwaved them some instant noodles that were greasy and salty and that Jian Yi got all over his face.

And they ate them on his bed, almost, like what had happened _hadn’t_ happened. Like if they didn’t talk about it then it wasn’t real and couldn’t come true. They ate and Zhengxi imagined every way they could change the inevitable reality of it, how they could make it _untrue_ , realising that he had started thinking of the whole thing as being about ‘them’, because there wasn’t a future where he imagined himself not going through it with Jian Yi together. Maybe that was why he hated the secrets, the unknown, because of the helplessness of it – of himself.

But he was also realising, dimly, the impossibility of it, and that did not make him feel useful at all.

How did someone run from a group that had eyes everywhere? That had money that reached impossible heights? That wasn’t afraid of ruthlessness because ruthlessness was standard.

How much pain, he wondered, would he be willing to go through? No – not willing. How much pain, rather, would he _be able_  to withstand?

Jian Yi sniffed, wiping his mouth with his blazer sleeve and Zhengxi made a note to wash it for him. He said, ‘Um. Why is there a gay porn magazine in your bin?’

Zhengxi thought he’d misheard him at first. And then he processed it, saw the magazine and the guy on the cover and awful title and felt himself flare up, everything at once going hot and red. ‘I bought the wrong thing,’ he said, nearly choking.

Jian Yi glanced at him. ‘You accidentally bought a gay porno?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded, slowly. ‘And did you—did it—’

‘Nothing.’

Nodded again, even slower. ‘It’s the same for me too.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

They looked at each other, and didn’t say what either of them could. Zhengxi looked at him, and felt his eyes welling, stinging, throat closing up.

‘Two years,’ he said, and it was almost a whisper. Was that really all they were going to get?

And Jian Yi said, ‘Two years,’ which really just answered his question: Yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149930625144/aphorism-xix-a-19-days-fanfic


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149979392634/aphorism-xx-a-19-days-fanfic

That October turned out to be a cold one.

Temperatures dipped to five degrees at night and barely got over ten in the day. It meant that everything seemed kind of austere; muted when it shouldn’t have been; chilling when it shouldn’t have been. It was why, when Guan Shan folded up his ma’s wheelchair and helped her into the taxi, the heat was blasting enough to make his brow sweat. It was why the seats were still cold and the windshield was wet with heating glass. His ma was asleep before they even pulled off, head on his shoulder as he kept an arm around her and winced at every speed bump and too-sharp pressing of the breaks.

He left her chair at the bottom of the stairs when they got to their block, bit his tongue so he didn’t cry when his ma let out a tiny sound of pain – she never used to say when she felt her hips aching and her back burning, just used to ask him if they happened to have any painkillers – and it seemed like years before they reached their floor and even longer before he could get his keys from his pocket while he carried her and tried to stick them in the lock.

Inside, it was cold, because the heating didn’t really work and Guan Shan didn’t want to turn the heating on because – well, because he’d ticked the ‘To Be Confirmed’ box on the hospital’s payment document when his ma was discharged and still had two weeks to figure it all out. Figure himself out.

He put his ma on her bed in her room: walls a fading pink, sheets and curtains a floral pattern that passed cute and become overbearing, stacks of books that clung to dust and made the room smell musty. The late afternoon light that came through the crack in the curtains was hazy and made dust swim about, and he couldn’t decide for a full ten minutes, standing there while his ma fell back to sleep in her haze of morphine and antibiotics, whether to open the windows because it was cold outside but the air was thick in here.

He opened it in, in the end, and the paint had peeled off the frame and the hinges were rusted and made a sort of screaming sound that made crows on the roof of the building take flight and cast shadows in the room as they passed.

His ma slept on her front, so he took the blankets off his bed and tucked them around her legs and above her waist, careful of the large bandage at the base of her spine. She looked small and barely breathing, and he sat on the edge of her bed and watched her and didn’t know what to do with himself and wondered if he was going to cry.

Was this what being twenty was supposed to be?

After a while he went into the kitchen, made some soup that was mostly stock cubes and hot water, and the mushrooms from the fridge that were nearly spoiled and some tofu he found in the freezer that he’d bought in bulk when it was on sale.

The doctors said his ma wouldn’t wake up until the morning now, so he ate a bowlful and put the rest in the fridge in a Tupperware that was scratched and stained with red because he used to keep tomatoes in it. Upstairs he could hear the mother shouting her kids, and part of him wanted to go upstairs and tell them to shut the fuck up or he’d cut them. Another part of him wanted to put on his headphones, wires held together with tape because the plastic had fractured and splintered off, and lie on his bed and shiver on the bare mattress and pretend like things didn’t exist for a minute.

The latter was, in fact, what he did do, and there was nothing romantic about it, nothing fucking _aesthetic_ about it, whatever _it_ was.

He Tian had bought him some headphones for his birthday last year – hadn’t wrapped them, or written a card, did nothing but messily peel off the price sticker which had probably been a figure Guan Shan hadn’t wanted to find out and hadn’t looked up – but they were unopened in the bottom box where he kept photos of his old man and the restaurant and an old, stained copy of the menu when it first opened and all that useless other shit people were sentimental about. He realised this made him one of those ‘people’, but he pretended it didn’t.

He was lying there, shivering because his t-shirt had grown thin and his window didn’t really shut properly and his hoodie was hanging over the balcony to dry because he’d washed it when he realised it smelled too much of hospitals and dead flowers. And then his phone rang.

He reached for it at the end of the bed, squinting at it because it was getting dark and his eyes had been shut.

He pressed the green phone icon.

‘Yeah?’

‘Come out with me.’

‘Where?’

‘Just for a drink. Jian Yi and Zhan will be there.’

‘That’s not much of a motivator.’

‘Bullshit. You want friends, don’t you?’

‘You’re confusing me with you, He Tian.’

His laugh was low and warm on the other end, and it made Guan Shan shiver, not from the cold, as it reached his ear.

‘Just come,’ He Tian said.

‘My ma’s just got out of the hospital.’

‘You said she was sleeping.’

‘She is—’

‘Then I’m taking this as a yes.’

‘He Tian—’

‘There in five.’

‘ _He Tian_ —’

But he had already hung up, and He Tian lived more than five minutes away but had probably already been on his way and Guan Shan wasn’t sure how he felt about He Tian picking him up all the time, how he felt when the neighbours must have been peering through the blinds at the kind of car that rolled up. Peering at who was getting in it, and what he was having to _do_ to sit in a car like that.

He hated the way it made him feel as he got in it, but he hated how people must have assumed things about He Tian too, even though he knew He Tian probably wouldn’t give a shit about what people around here thought about him, already summed them up because of where they lived and how much money they earned and what they wore because it was all on coarse display for anyone to look at.

He wondered, really, what He Tian would have thought about him if the first time they’d met was here. If, maybe, He Tian had gotten lost and rolled down the window with a cigarette between his lips and Guan Shan had been the one to lean down and peer through with a sneer on his face. Would he still like him then? (Did he even ‘like’ him now? Was that a word they could use to describe their _feelings_?) Would he still want to touch him and _do_ things to him? Would he still want to look at him like he did?

Like he was doing now, getting out the car, walking up to him, that kind of walk that was fast and quiet and predatory and made Guan Shan feel, when he stood still, like he was being hunted.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ he said, playing with the lighter in his hand but not lighting up because apparently he was trying to quit.

‘I’m fine,’ Guan Shan said, which was a lie. He’d taken his ma’s wheelchair back into the apartment and gotten her a glass of water and left the lights on in case she woke up and put a small container of pills on the bedside and left a just-in-case note on the back of an old cardboard cracker box. And he’d felt hot at the end of it, skin a little damp, but now he stood outside, and He Tian was longer than five minutes and the air was chill and his breath made soft bursts of cloud in front of his face.

He Tian gave him a look, because of course he knew it was a lie, like he could see the goosebumps along his arms, and he took his jacket off. It was leather, and was warm on his skin, and his arms were longer than Guan Shan’s so the sleeves fell a little past his wrists and made him feel a bit like a kid.

‘You’re being nice,’ he said, as He Tian opened the door for him and he sat low against the heated seats.

‘Hardly,’ He Tian said as he climbed in on the driver’s side, turning the radio down to something low and muted, a murmur of voices as he shut the door and pulled away from the peering eyes and the kids that were loitering and watching and getting closer as they pulled out from the shadows. ‘This is all purely selfish.’

‘Yeah?’

He Tian looked at him. He felt his skin starting to flush from the heat of the car, and flushing because that look made him feel hot. He was still remembering when they’d kissed, like it was the first time, pretending, almost, that it was. He remembered the surprise on He Tian’s face, like he didn’t think something like that was possible between them, like he didn’t expect himself to enjoy it. Guan Shan wanted to show him a lot of things that he would probably enjoy and didn’t think he would, because he thought there was probably a whole world out there for him to see, full of simplicities and implicit desire and quietness.

‘I just like seeing you in my clothes,’ He Tian said, fingers loose on the gear stick, the other hand on the wheel. He looked lazy when he drove, but in that sort of effortlessly _languid_ way that Guan Shan had never been able to achieve. Guan Shan wondered if it was a class thing – a money thing – the ability to be able to look like you didn’t give a shit and that you never actually did anything while still looking attractive.

If Guan Shan did it, he knew it would probably make him look like some sort of truant delinquent. Maybe it was the hair.

‘You’re such a _guy_ ,’ Guan Shan said.

He Tian snorted at this, flashed him a look that said _What’s that supposed to mean?_ and said that he knew exactly what it meant at the same time.

‘You’ll be cold now,’ Guan Shan said when the silence stretched, his words muttered, small, like if he said them louder He Tian would ask for his jacket back and there were really a number of reasons that he didn’t want to _give_ it back.

And He Tian shrugged, like he didn’t feel the cold, like it didn’t matter, and Guan Shan wondered what idiot came up with the idea that someone giving up a piece of clothing for someone else was _romantic_. Because then it was still fucking unbalanced, and what was _cute_ about that?

They drove into the centre, lights seeming trapped in a haze of cold mist as the night grew colder and darker, stars burning bright in a pitch-coloured sky. Eventually they parked and walked the short distance to the banks of the Qinhuai River, buildings and fences and stalls lit up in neon lights that winked in the night and made strange patterns in the flickering surface of the river. The area was still busy despite the chill, tourists peering hesitantly at the trinkets in the stalls, couples strolling along the pathways or watching the lights from one of the old boats that moved silently along the water.

They found Zhan Zhengxi and Jian Yi in a bar not so far from the Confucius Temple, watching basketball from a flat-screen TV fixed to the back wall and eating hot pot. Cuts of beef and pork and vegetables were scattered in dishes around the table, drenched in sauces that were made of broth and tomatoes and something that smelled spicy.

‘You started already, you dicks,’ He Tian said, falling into a chair and stealing the rest of Zhengxi’s half-empty beer bottle with a dark look of victory. Guan Shan sat next to him, chair scooting a little closer which was not an accident. He never felt entirely _right_ when he was around the other two. Not because of schoolboy antics and fights and suspensions, but because they seemed to have something that he never had, and he didn’t want to think about how their wholeness made him feel somewhat empty.

‘I was _starving_ ,’ Jian Yi complained around a mouthful of food.

He Tian rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything else but drink another mouthful of beer, probably because – and even Guan Shan noticed this – Jian Yi still had a pale, hollow look to him, and the words might not actually have been untrue.

He Tian held the bottle out to Guan Shan, and there was a mouthful left, and even though it had been Zhengxi’s before it had been He Tian’s, he drank it anyway.

‘How’s life, Red?’ Jian Yi said, picking at the food with a focus like he was choosing between a red and blue pill.

Guan Shan glanced at him, pulling his eyes away from the screen. He hadn’t played basketball in years. Hadn’t really played it much in school because the three of them were always on the court and Guan Shan hadn’t wanted to look stupid if he asked if he could play, and the court by his building was always used by a group of men who maybe lived there but always told him to fuck off if he looked like he was about to come over.

‘Shit,’ he said, and then looked at He Tian. Their legs were pressed against each and it made him feel warm. ‘Most of the time.’

Jian Yi nodded. ‘I heard your mother was ill?’

‘She got out the hospital today.’

‘That’s good,’ Jian Yi said, and he always spoke like he meant it, even if he wasn’t actually being decent, so Guan Shan appreciated the sentiment.

‘How’s school?’ He Tian said. They’d ordered a few more bottles of beer. Jian Yi, Guan Shan noticed, didn’t drink, but Zhan contrast seemed content to slouch and half-listen and watch the game and drink green bottles until the emptiness of the glass glittered.

‘Shit,’ Jian Yi said. He grinned. ‘Most of the time.’

‘Still flunking most of your classes?’

‘Please,’ Jian Yi said. ‘I’m an exemplary student now. That was your bad influence.’

‘Sorry, _who_ was the one that asked me if I could get them out of school so he could see his _boyfriend_?’

‘Fuck off.’

He Tian grinned. Zhan didn’t look like he was playing any particular attention, but Guan Shan saw the way his fingers tightened around the bottle, the ways his eyes changed from watching the screen to just looking.

‘And you, Zhan?’ Guan Shan asked him, couldn’t help that his voice sounded quiet and almost tentative – not hard and vaguely disinterested like he wanted it to; not with that nonchalance that he used to carry around with him, because he couldn’t just care that little anymore. Most people, he thought, would grow hardened and apathetic with his kind of life. Instead he seemed to have become softer, and he didn’t think he liked that. Not because of something like an _image_ or a persona that was being ruined, that was starting not to match the way he looked, but because it seemed to make him only more susceptible to all the shitty things that kept happening to him.

‘Fine,’ Zhan said, shrugging, eyes only glancing at him like he didn’t want to – _couldn’t_ look at him for too long. ‘I’ve got exams coming up soon, so the professors are being pretty hard on us all.’

‘You’re studying astronomy, right?’

Zhan nodded. His gaze slid to He Tian. ‘And no I won’t tell you your fucking horoscope.’

He Tian was already laughing, a quiet shaking thing that Guan Shan could feel. He felt distinctly _bare_ wearing his jacket, like he was lit up like the temples and the buildings, like it was Christmas and there were neon signs flashing on him that said, ‘Look at me!’

‘I thought that was astrology,’ Jian Yi said, frowning with some real seriousness.

‘It is,’ Zhan said, teeth gritted. ‘He Tian thinks he’s being _funny_.’

‘Thinks?’ He Tian said. ‘I’m fucking _hilarious_.’

Guan Shan, quietly, snorted at this.

‘See?’ said Zhan. He had a sneer on his face. ‘Even _your_ boyfriend doesn’t see it.’

‘ _My boyfriend_ knows I can be entertaining where it matters.’

He said this with his usual sharp satisfaction, always with the edge of a challenge to his words, no matter how unhurried they could sound on the surface. But this time there was some sly amusement in it, because it made Zhan uncomfortable. Because, frankly, He Tian didn’t give a _damn_ what anyone else thought of him. Because it must have given him some small thrill of pleasure while they all knew Zhan had gone – was still going through – some inner turmoil, specifically, about the guy that sat next to him. This was not particularly a kind thing for He Tian to do, but Guan Shan also didn’t really care.

‘Well?’ He Tian said, and Guan Shan realised he was looking at him.

‘What?’

‘You’re not going to say anything?’

Guan Shan, quietly, frowned. He realised that they were all looking at him. ‘What am I supposed to say?’

And, for a moment, it was like He Tian didn’t know what to say either, like this wasn’t the reaction he’d expected – that he’d planned for, because He Tian only did things when he could predict the response, control the outcome. Except, perhaps, with him, which was where his interest lay.

‘Well, are you?’

‘Am I _what_ , He Tian?’ he said, irritated now, because _god_ , He Tian. The way to get an answer was not to just keep _looking_ and asking more _questions_.

And He Tian blinked, for a minute, uncertain. He swallowed, looked at Jian Yi and Zhan like, for a minute, he’d realised this was not something he’d wanted to make public and on display in order to prove a point. To gain some sort of dominance. ‘Are you—Are you my boyfriend or aren’t you?’

Guan Shan just looked at him, because was _this_ what this whole thing was about? ‘Well, am I?’ he said.

‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘If you want to be. Don’t fucking strain yourself, though.’

And Guan Shan shrugged. ‘All right then.’

‘All right?’

‘I’m wearing your fucking jacket, He Tian.’

And He Tian looked at him, leaned back slightly as if to take him in. And yeah, his expression said, he _was_ wearing his jacket, and that was about as good as things got anymore.

‘You two are fucked up,’ Zhan muttered. It wasn’t with that kind of nastiness, that darkness that it could have been, but it still made He Tian glare at him.

‘And you’re not?’ He Tian said. ‘At least I’m fucking honest with myself.’

‘I know exactly who I am.’

‘Really?’

And to this, Zhan did not reply, because He Tian wasn’t really asking just to goad him, just out of spite. He asked him because he actually meant it, and because he genuinely doubted him.

‘Leave it, He Tian,’ Jian Yi said, because they weren’t really playing anymore, and probably this was none of He Tian’s business.

So he shrugged and said, ‘Suit yourself,’ and drank the rest of his beer – third bottle – and pretended to be watching the basketball.

The bar was full now, carrying with it that kind of heady thickness in the air that smelled of beer and liquor and cigarettes and cooking meat. They weren’t near the door, but every time it opened cold air leaked through and carried with it a chill that made them all shiver, broke the charm that the place could put on them all, like watching sports on TV and drinking and eating hot pot was as good as it got. It brought with it, incidentally, a cold kind of reality that reminded Guan Shan that his ma was still at home and the bills were still unpaid and he was here drinking when he probably should have been doing something else.

He’d applied for a few more jobs that week – small, part-time work: the night shift at a garage, the morning shift at a bakery, an assistant job at a florist (because even if he didn’t really like the sound of that one at least his ma would). And so far he’d heard nothing back, but He Tian told him to be patient, which was easy for him to say, but he’d also half-written his CV for him so he couldn’t be too ungrateful.

They were talking about He Tian’s job now, at his family’s company, and when Guan Shan had asked about it he was weirdly reserved. Because he liked to talk about himself, really, and so Guan Shan thought it strange.

‘You can tell us,’ Jian Yi was saying now, wearing a dark, conspiratorial smile.

He Tian’s look was the same, but there was a kind of flush to his cheeks, a darkness to his eyes like his pupils were blown, lips reddening where he kept biting them and wrapping them around the cold neck of a beer bottle.

Guan Shan had only seen him drunk a few times, when they were younger. He remembered seeing He Tian in town on New Year’s one night, stinking of liquor and stumbling into other people’s arms and they all laughed with that rich-boy obnoxiousness, and He Tian had seen Guan Shan looking, suddenly startled that they were in the same part of the city on a night like this and they were _looking_ at each other, and he came over to him, stumbling and laughing at himself and pressing his face into his neck when he got there, not caring because everyone would probably excuse his actions as drunkenness.

‘Come back to mine,’ He Tian had said. Maybe he’d meant to whisper it but it was just low and dark and shivered into Guan Shan’s skin.

And Guan Shan had said no, because he didn’t particularly want to spend the night at He Tian’s apartment on New Year’s when He Tian was like this, handsy and sort of desperate and breathless, because, then, he hadn’t been able to handle him at the best of times.

But he’d gone, in the end, clambering with awkward limbs into a taxi because He Tian said he’d drive otherwise and Guan Shan, _for fuck’s sake He Tian_ , wouldn’t let him. And they’d fucked messily and awkwardly because Guan Shan had been drinking but he wasn’t _that_ drunk and He Tian definitely was. But they came together when it got to midnight and He Tian had laughed quietly through a ‘Happy New Year’, and when he was sober at four o’clock in the morning they’d done it again and again at eight even though they were tired and they stank of alcohol and stale sweat and sex. They’d ordered take-out for breakfast and fucked again in the shower and spent the day watching TV on He Tian’s sofa.

And He Tian told him that he’d never done anything like that before.

And they’d done quite a lot so Guan Shan wasn’t sure which ‘that’ he was referring to.    

‘This,’ He Tian had said. ‘Just… You know. Doing shit just because you want to and not having to think about it. Eating shitty food and watching TV and not feeling obliged to, like, go anywhere or make excuses. Uncalculating. Uncomplicated. Not because either of us _wanted_ anything from each other at the end of it.’

And because his ma had stayed at Huai’s that night he could admit, if only to himself, that he kind of felt the same.

He thought about that now, looking at him, feeling what he’d felt then and more, not really knowing what it was, but he was smart enough, _real_ enough, to know what it _wasn’t_.

‘Fine,’ He Tian said, and he leaned forward, forearms on the table, looking around like he was telling sleepover secrets. He said, ‘I’m looking into gang activity in Nanjing.’

When He Tian was drunk his accent took on a different tone, something that reminded them all of what family he came from and how much money he had, and it always sounded strange because he also put more effort into _not_ sounding like he was the rich boy that they knew he was, so it left him sounding strangely disparate, floating between identities, unsure which one he was and which one he wanted to be, and Guan Shan noticed that this was one thing that had not really changed anymore. He didn’t cling to the personas like he had in middle school because he’d found them entertaining with a wry schoolboy amusement, but he still hadn’t let them all go.

Guan Shan thought about all this, because for a few moments he couldn’t quite think of anything else. Until eventually: ‘ _Gangs_?’

And He Tian nodded with a drunken sageness. ‘Apparently there’s some big drug activity at the moment, probably from, like, big cartel suppliers.’

‘Cartel,’ said Jian Yi, and Guan Shan probably should have noticed that he didn’t seem to find any of this particularly interesting – or, rather, he did, but not in the taboo kind of awe that young men had in talking about drug trade and things that were illegal but still kind of wickedly exciting. He probably should have noticed that Zhan wore the same kind of expression, and that they were all listening and hanging of He Tian’s words, but probably not for the reasons he thought they were.

‘Yeah. Seems like they’re getting heroin in bulk and selling it on the streets. It used to just be about territory and turf wars but they’re getting fucking _entrepreneurial_ now.’

‘They’re making money?’ Guan Shan said.

‘Yeah. A lot. Not as much as the suppliers are though. MSS thinks it’s Triad.’

‘In Nanjing?’ said Jian Yi, scratching at his jaw. Zhan couldn’t seem to stop staring at him. ‘It’s not exactly Beijing.’

‘Which is probably why they’re doing it here. Beijing has its own fucking Bureau to deal with this kind of shit. We’ve just got one local law enforcement that has to deal with domestic violence and alcoholism and all the rest of this city’s mundane fucking sins.’

‘Are there a lot of them?’ Guan Shan asked. His own words were slightly slurred, and he felt that strange heavy weightlessness that came with the drunkenness, aware of everything and yet unable to make sense of it. He thought, distantly, that drunken conversations were supposed to be _funny_.

‘What?’

‘Are they big groups? Are you only looking at one? Do you even know if it’s one gang or—’

‘I’ve got the north region,’ he said, which was where Guan Shan lived. ‘There’s only one there. They leave the same stupid logos everywhere. Wear the same stupid wristbands. They haven’t really got the inconspicuousness of the Chinese mafia, if we’re being honest.’

Suddenly, Jian Yi started laughing. Turned it into a coughing sound. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

Guan Shan, quietly, put his hands beneath the table. ‘Do you think you’ll get them?’

He Tian shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The more money they get, the more it draws attention to themselves, but if they start using that money to be smart, then they might get away with it. It’s only now that they’re starting to gain any sort of financial gravitas that the government doesn’t like it. Because it’s tax avoidance, really, isn’t it? They don’t give a shit about how people earn their money so long as it goes back to the government. And if it’s not doing that, then…’

Guan Shan swallowed, felt his hands curling into fists. They shouldn’t be talking about this here. Didn’t know who was listening. And He Tian shouldn’t have been given something like this. Because, fucking hell, Guan Shan was the one that got involved with all this kind of shit. Not him. Guan Shan was the one that was supposed to end it with knives in him, bloodied and cut like ribbons because he was the fucking desperate one. He wanted to tell He Tian that this wasn’t a fast car. You couldn’t put a seat belt on and put your foot on the brake when it got too much. And it didn’t matter that he was actually on the ‘good’ side of it, that he almost just an onlooker, because he was still _in_ it. And he knew, god he knew, that once you got in, you never really got out.

‘It’s dangerous,’ Zhan said, and Guan Shan wasn’t actually surprised that he was the one who’d said it. ‘You could get hurt.’

‘I’m fine,’ He Tian said, rolling his eyes. He picked at the label on his bottle. ‘I don’t actually get that close. It’s just digital surveillance.’

‘You were in a gang, weren’t you, Red?’ Jian Yi asked. He had been listening with an air of disquiet, like he was hovering on the periphery of it all, and his lack of immediate interest was what made him stand out.

‘When I was younger,’ Guan Shan muttered, didn’t think about the irony of the fact that they still called him Red. Or the fact that ‘younger’ wasn’t so long ago.

‘They’re not like the ones that were about when we were in school,’ He Tian said, shaking his head. His voice had taken on a kind of seriousness, like he was realising that it was real, that Guan Shan, next to him, was some sort of evidence to the whole thing.

‘No?’ Guan Shan said.

‘No. These are – they’re like businesses. I mean, fucking terrible administration and no care for health and safety and piss poor management. But they’re getting, like, _affluent_ now. It’s almost becoming a job.’

‘Like small branches of organised crime,’ Jian Yi said. ‘Like it’s a chain restaurant.’

‘Yeah,’ He Tian said. ‘Like there’s management and hierarchy.’

‘Should I hand in my CV?’ Guan Shan said, feeling kind of ill and not in the joking mood, so he didn’t know why he said it, and only He Tian and Jian Yi really laughed.

But He Tian was getting drunker and the bar was emptying and the food had gone cold and the table couldn’t take many more bottles, so soon Guan Shan put him in a taxi with Jian Yi and Zhan who’d take him back to his own apartment because _no_ he wasn’t fucking _driving_ , He Tian.

He Tian shoved a wad of cash at him that he wouldn’t take back and told him to keep the jacket, so Guan Shan waited on the side of the road for another taxi to pass, feeling the cold despite the haze of the beer that made his hands shake as he pulled out his phone, despite the jacket that before had made him feel warm and weirdly, naively, safe.

He stared at his phone, put in the number that he’d never saved and wished he’d forgotten, and knew he probably wouldn’t. Typed out the letters that should have come out jumbled and typically drunken, but they were clear, concise, couldn’t really have gone too wrong wrong with an eleven-worded question, and he wasn’t even drunk enough that he could have said, in the morning, that it had all been a mistake.

 _Dai Lin, it’s Red_ , he typed. _What do you want me to do?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/149979392634/aphorism-xx-a-19-days-fanfic


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150048971769/aphorism-xxi-a-19-days-fanfic

Surveillance, this time, would be different for Tian.

Mostly, his brother supposed, because he was looking at a network and not the sordid adventures of one man. Mostly because this was something that festered through a city and didn’t boil down to a closed case and a hanging at the end of it. Mostly because, before, the person he had been watching had been predictably, humanly stupid, and hadn’t realised he had He Security on his trail. And, mostly, because Tian probably hadn’t realised yet that this had – would – become something that was personal.

His brother wondered if He Tian had checked Mo Guan Shan’s phone records, or watched him on the cameras, because that was probably something Tian would have done before. He wondered if He Tian knew that the job Guan Shan had applied for been a success but that he’d taken this route instead – _chosen_ it. He wondered, mostly, what Tian would do when he found out. Because he would.

In hindsight this was a cruelty, knowing that the needle Tian was looking for in the haystack was a knife dipped in poison. But then he had always had a particular brand of cruelty about him, wore it like a coat buttoned up tight in winter, pressing lines into his skin so that it was almost mistaken as such. Didn’t, really, know why. Because it was easy to blame his father when Tian seemed to have inherited his own unique strand of it too, but usually he wondered if it was just him, and that he’d been the one to leak it into Tian as he grew up and treated him with coldness even as a child, didn’t wish him a Happy Birthday, didn’t let him touch his things, pretended sometimes he hadn’t heard him when Tian tried to speak to him.

Even now he wondered why he used to do it, what childish selfishness that had been, before he understood what brothers were supposed to be and what morals were.

Perhaps he still hadn’t understood, because he didn’t tell Tian anything. He stood behind him as he scrolled through CCTV coverage and asked him if he’d found anything and if he had any names or locations and Tian would say, ‘Nearly, but not yet. I’m getting close.’

And his brother would wonder if he’d be there when _close_ happened. If he’d get to see it. If he’s get to see that look on his face. The realisation. The moment where his mind just went _oh._

What a rampage it would be afterwards.

Had Ah-Tian, he thought, ever felt like this about anyone? He used to think he wasn’t capable. But of course it would be the poor boy with the sick mother and the outstanding temper. The one who played with knives and had red hair that was sometimes bright as blood. Of course it would be a _boy_. Because he’d never really done simple, had he? And perhaps Tian thought he was getting closer to it – to simple – like they weren’t just fucking anymore because probably that had been all Tian knew how to do (it was all his brother had known how to do, really). There’d been a reason Tian had asked him if he and Chee-hwa had been nice to each other when they were dating, and he was starting to get why now.

For a while he’d thought the whole illicit affair with Mo Guan Shan was some private revenge, some subconscious acting out a from a kid with daddy issues and a deficient sense of worth, but, like most things with Ah-Tian, it had mistakenly turned out to be more.

So for now he watched him, didn’t tell him anything, waited for the moment that would come and that he felt strangely reluctant about. Like he cared if it hurt Tian. Because he _did_ care about him. He did. But it was the strange care of not caring about anything else – anyone else beyond him – so if he was with someone that maybe he loved and maybe the poor kid ended up dead, then he probably wouldn’t care about that.

 _People don’t change, Tian Ti_ , he wanted to tell him. _They just get more disappointing_. _And they fuck up. And you get hurt._

And it wasn’t that they were guys and they were ‘together’ that He Tian’s brother wanted to tell him this. He wanted to tell him this because he saw that it was also infatuation and infatuation had an expiry date and no one, really, was worth it when they were the type of person that came to an inevitable, tragic end unworthy of a newspaper obituary.

‘Am I doing something wrong?’

He glanced down, looking at Tian looking at him, neck craned from where he sat in front of the computer.

‘Hm?’

‘You’re being weird and quiet,’ Tian said.

‘I was thinking you were doing well. Are you finding the group meetings with the others useful?’

Tian shrugged. ‘Sort of. The north area seems to be uniquely solitary. Like the gang that controls it is the _only_ one that controls it. The others seem to have traces of other gangs’ activity running all through the rest of the city.’

‘If nothing else you can listen to how the others methodise this.’

Tian shrugged again, glanced behind him as footsteps sounded and a shadow fell.

‘You again,’ he said.

Jan Xiu was smiling, and He Tian’s brother wondered if he wore any other expression. He’d smiled through his interview, which he was supposed to have liked and given him credit for but didn’t. And he smiled in the lift when everyone else was tired and ready to go home.

‘Me again,’ Jan Xiu said. ‘Hello, brothers.’

Tian sighed. ‘Figured it out at last?’

‘Hardly difficult,’ he said. ‘I mean. Look at you both.’

He Tian’s brother raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t attempt to explain that, Jan Xiu.’

‘Of course, Sir,’ he said, smiling, rocking on the back of his heels. His hair was wet with gel like he’d just showered and his throat was bare between his shirt collars. He Tian and his brother wore theirs buttoned up with a tie, and his brother hadn’t fully decided what he thought about the lax regard for uniform.

Jan Xiu stepped closer, arm almost touching his, and he peered over at He Tian’s screen. Squinted at the pixelated satellite image blown up across the screen.

‘The warehouses?’ he said, looking at the image. The warehouses stretched for at least a few miles in an area of north Nanjing, square blocks of perforated iron and dirt paths and clusters of huge containers that He Tian’s brother knew was a short cut to Mo Guan Shan’s neighbourhood.

Tian shrugged. ‘There’s nothing really there. I was just skimming past.’

‘Then you’re naïve,’ Jan Xiu said. ‘People always use spaces that they think aren’t monitored. That they think other people will overlook. The police rarely check the area.’

His brother almost said something, didn’t know what, but Jan Xiu pushed past him until his back was pressed up against Ah-Tian’s and he leaned over and took the mouse in one hand, fingers resting on the keyboard with the other.

Tian, to his credit, did nothing but sit still.

‘People don’t realise there are still cameras working,’ Jan Xiu said. ‘The police used to use them in the eighties. They thought people would start using them for raves.’

He Tian’s brother frowned. ‘Because acid houses under the red flag was a good idea.’

‘Didn’t say that, Sir,’ Jan Xiu said. ‘Just that the police were overzealous in the technology they used to monitor its people.’

‘They’re still active?’ Tian said, glasses reflecting the glow, watching as boxes popped up on the screen and Jan Xiu entered past codes and verification details.

‘Some of them,’ Jan Xiu said. ‘Some broke a few years ago and haven’t been used since. You see all sorts of interesting things here.’

‘Do you tell the police?’

Jan Xiu gave him a look. ‘I’m not an idiot,’ he said. He stood up when a greyscale image cropped up, eyeing the screen with some private pleasure. The quality was grainy and obviously aged, but the time matched the one on Tian’s computer, ticking away. It looked still as water on a hot, airless day. ‘There are few places in this city you can look at sometimes and know that you’re the only one other than people that are there to know that something’s happening.’

Something about those words made He Tian pause, and his brother wondered what it was. ‘Have you seen any gangs there?’

‘Maybe,’ Jan Xiu said. ‘I’m not really interested in that kind of thing. There are better things to watch most of the time.’

Again, that quiet, that pause, a look between them that said there was something between them not being said. A question, perhaps. Something testing, pressing to see if something would bruise.

‘Why are you helping me?’ Tian said. He asked with a kind of brute honesty that his brother hadn’t seen him often use, like maybe he’d forgotten he was there.

And this time Jan Xiu looked at his brother, and he knew exactly what lay behind it. ‘Heard what you were looking into. I thought I might have known something that could help.’

 _Don’t you fucking dare_ , his brother wanted to say.

But Jan Xiu’s look was even and weighted and _conscious_ like he’d thought his brother might have known but wasn’t entirely sure but now – now he _definitely_ knew. And, really, it was full of the accusation that most normal people were direct at him.

It said, really: _You’re the one standing and watching in silence._ And, too: _At least this way he might hate me more than he’ll hate you_.  

 

* * *

 

‘We could go to Timbuktu.’

‘Is that in America?’

‘Africa, idiot.’

‘Too hot.’

Zhengxi sighed, flicked through the rest of the _National Geographic_ he’d bought. He didn’t like reading it, because the articles were mostly about global warming and the ten deadliest spiders that live in your house and the extinction of another species and it made him _sad_. Angry, too.

Sometimes he went to campus at night because students had access to the telescope equipment and he’d look through and feel small as a star, and that made him sad, too, but not angry. Because that was an inevitable sadness, a self-reflective kind of thing. An existential realisation. Not one that he could, or that _people_ could, change. It didn’t mean he’d accepted it, or that he found any comfort in it – only time he had was when he’d looked up and convinced himself that Jian Yi, wherever he’d been, might be looking up too – but he appreciated the permanence of it if nothing else.

He remembered the night, with the sparklers – had it been too much? – trying to write their names in the sky like it was more than just the hesitant, fleeting memory of light in their eyes. He remembered Jian Yi’s hand on the back of his head, the warmth of it, the strange comfort. Remembered, for days after, wondering what he’d wished for, and wondering if it had been about him.

‘What about Iceland?’ Jian Yi said. He was in Zhengxi’s desk chair – _in_ because his legs hung over one arm and his neck over the other and his spine looked like it ached.

‘It’s pretty fucking cold there.’

‘Not really. Any they have pretty lights. We could buy a house in the mountains and sell woollen jumpers.’

Zhengxi tried to think less about the fact that he’d just called the Aurora Borealis _pretty lights_ and more about the fact that Jian Yi was imagining them running away together to an isolated country where there would be no electricity and they’d have to find things and each other by candle light and touch and the air would be so clean it would almost be sharp and no one would be around for miles but them and the stars and the pretty lights.

It was, mildly, terrifying, but he wasn’t sure that was a bad thing.

‘Fantastic,’ Zhengxi said eventually, because he’d been silent to long and Jian Yi noticed those pauses too much now.

‘Or we could get a campervan and I could drive us around the US and then find a lodge in Canada.’

‘No,’ Zhengxi said. ‘You’re a fucking terrible driver.’

This was true, but it was also true that Zhengxi didn’t want the inconstant changing landscape of a place like that. The suddenness of crossing borders, the expanse of desert with nothing but flickering motel signs and dry rocks. The violence of a city that drifted into big houses and bigger waterfalls. Too much too soon and suddenly not enough.

And besides, not that his Icelandic was much better than his English, but cold nights and mountains and stars had sounded pretty good.

Jian Yi sighed, tossed his textbook to the side. Maths, again, which he hated, and which Zhengxi had spent most of the afternoon talking him through. It was the Double 9th Festival the following week, October almost finished with them, and Zhengxi was aware of time passing them like he had never felt before.

This wasn’t to say that it was going _fast_ , but that he could feel it now, like the way coldness made the hairs on his arms raise. Feel it like that motion he felt before he went to sleep, like he was falling back, the lurch of a rollercoaster ride. He could feel it every time the door opened and Jian Yi came in and Abel sat under the desk next to the radiator and he had to blink and check that, yeah, he was real and this was happening and he actually had come back.

Suddenly, Jian Yi’s phone lit up and let out a bell peal. He’d set it to the sound of Abel’s bark at one point, but then she’d start barking back and once the excitement made her take a piss on Zhengxi’s floor and the ringtone hadn’t stayed long.

Jian Yi unfolded himself, crawled onto the bed where his phone lay.

Zhengxi would have been lying if he pretended like he didn’t want to see who the messages were from, because the phone kept dinging with texts and Jian Yi’s face was growing darker.

‘Who is it?’ he said.

And Jian Yi muttered, ‘Who’d you think?’

‘I thought you said…’

‘Yeah, well, they’re kind of not obliged to keep to their end of the bargain when they have no morals and no qualms about hurting the people I care about. So.’

‘What do they want you to do?’

‘I’m not telling you.’

Zhengxi felt his jaw clench, tried not show he was angry because he – okay, yeah, he was. ‘Jian Yi…’

Jian Yi looked up. ‘I’m not telling you because if I do I’ll walk through that door next time and you’ll see me differently. You think I want that?’

‘I think that says more about what you think of me than anything else.’ Zhengxi put the magazine down across his lap, held a hand out. ‘Let me see.’

Jian Yi narrowed his eyes. ‘No.’

‘Jian Yi—’

And Jian Yi held the phone up, long fingers grasping it, knuckles nearly scraping the low ceiling as he kneeled on the bed.

And, slowly, Zhengxi kneeled too.

Tension hovered, thick, and then he lunged.

It was a desperate sort of scrabble, elbows and teeth and one of them was laughing and—

‘ _Fuck,_ that was my—’

‘Shut up and get _off_ me you—’

And there were hands and fingers poking in ribs and the sheets were getting twisted and, Zhengxi couldn’t even see the phone anymore and then—

Jian Yi, on him, pinning him, and the phone was on the floor and had been there a while and what had all that been for? And he knew his pulse must be hammering beneath Jian Yi’s fingers, not even very tight around his wrists. And Jian Yi’s face was shadowed and his breath was warm on his face, and he’d forgotten for a while how beautiful his eyes were. Remembered lying in bed when Jian Yi had stayed over and telling him he was handsome while thinking beautiful and meaning it and not wanting him to _know_ he meant it because that changed things.

For a while, things stopped.

For a while, there were chests cavernous and aching and hollow and expanding with slow breaths. And there were eyes that were glistening because they hadn’t been shut in a while. And there were lips drying and wetting as tongues darted out, and there was too much fabric shifting, so slightly, so barely, against fabric and it made – it made breath hitch in dry throats and the light just seemed to be fading so _fast_.

And then Jian Yi moved. Something in him changed, some sort of hesitant waiting, a darkness in his eyes, vanishing. And he leaned forward, slow and testing and his lips were what Zhengxi imagined a ghost’s touch might feel like, feather-light, barely there.

And when they weren’t touching anymore, Zhengxi said, lips almost stirring his as they moved around the words, ‘What are you doing?’

And things stopped for a second time.

This time did not feel suspended like the last. This felt like weighted bodies crashing into the sea and bone fragments smashing like glass and the boom of thunder, and when Jian Yi leaned back – hadn’t let go, and Zhengxi couldn’t believe how _still_ he was still holding himself, wrists pinned, shirt ridden up slightly so the skin of his stomach was hot against the brush of Jian Yi’s t-shirt.

‘I—’

‘You still haven’t fucking asked if that’s what I want.’

And then Jian Yi moved – fell, tripped, tore himself away from him, suddenly heaving, eyes wild as a rabbit’s at the end of a gun barrel, and Zhengxi didn’t feel bad. Should have. Might have hated himself later.

But now he was thinking about Jian Yi, soft, still taking what he wanted and fucking the consequences like they were something to be dealt with later like paperwork and hospital debts.

Zhengxi felt the emptiness of his skin where Jian Yi’s had been, head static as 4 AM television, watched as Jian Yi grabbed Abel by the collar and didn’t even take his shoes and left the door open because he wasn’t angry enough to slam it.

Typically, again, he had run like they didn’t know how to use their words now. And Zhengxi lay against his sheets that somehow felt spoiled even though nothing had happened and wondered what would have happened if he’d been silent. Let him take. Let him do what he wanted.

Because he didn’t know anymore if that wasn’t what _he_ wanted, but it felt only like Jian Yi wasn’t giving him enough time to make that decision for himself.

A clock ticked quietly in the silence, and he heard a dog barking, distantly aware of his own stillness and the hammering of his heartbeat and the way he lay exactly as Jian Yi had placed him. Arranged him. Left him.

Outside, the stars were not shining down on them, cloud thick and purpling in the autumn sky, and thunder boomed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150048971769/aphorism-xxi-a-19-days-fanfic


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150085715214/aphorism-xxii-a-19-days-fanfic

He went to He Tian’s, bone-soaked and trembling and probably looking about as shit as felt.

And He Tian said, ‘Fucking hell. You look like shit,’ which, given He Tian’s penchant for painful truths when they weren’t needed or wanted, just about confirmed it.

‘Can I come in?’

He Tian said nothing, just stepped aside, let the door swing open. Let Jian Yi peel off his shoes and press wet footprints into the floor. Let Abel pad inside and shake water and fur around the hallway before wandering off into a too-large apartment for one person.

Two persons. Mo Guan Shan was leaning against the island counter in the kitchen, a dish cloth in his hands, something that smelled spicy and rich cooling in open Tupperware containers.

‘Hey,’ he said, but his expression said more as he took in the see-through t-shirt, the jeans that were dragging muddy water across the floor. ‘All right?’

‘Not really,’ Jian Yi said. ‘Zhengxi and I…’

‘Ah,’ said He Tian. He pulled out a porcelain bowl from the cupboard, filling it with water from the tap and setting it on the floor for Abel with a quiet clicking sound. Abel was making puddles on the floor and looking promisingly at the sofa across from the open kitchen. White sofa.

Red found a towel from one of the bathrooms, knelt down and tried his best to dry her off as she fidgeted and tried to bat him with a paw.

‘Didn’t know you had a dog,’ he said.

‘She’s new,’ Jian Yi said faintly. Thinking only about how domestic the whole thing seemed before him. He didn’t think a word like that could apply to people like them, and he wondered why it couldn’t be something someone like him was allowed to have. Really, his life was just as fucked up as theirs, wasn’t it? Didn’t that make him  _qualified_? Maybe some strange entity was looking down at him and thinking that domestic wasn’t something, given everything that was happening, that he could handle.

‘There are some spare clothes and towels in the end bedroom,’ He Tian said, watching him with a gaze that could slip so easily between light and dark, tethered to some overall impression that everything was  _funny._ But this time he didn’t have that quirk of lightness, the lift at the edge of his mouth, some quiet light in his dark eyes that reminded Jian Yi of stars against a black hole.

He showered in one of the bathrooms that had unopened bottles of some fancy European body wash that smelled of cinnamon and quiet winters. Stood under the water until his skin was red and raw, changed the temperature until he was shivering again and it was sharp and not brittle and made his breath  _hurt_.

There was a knock on the door at one point. And Jian Yi said that he was fine. Just give him a minute.

Give him a while.

He’d done it again.

 _Why_ had he done it again?

‘You’re fucking up again,’ he told himself, the words shivering and trembling passed his lips. The shower wall was a blurred white in front of him, hands wrapped around his stomach, water running down his face, hair plastered, drops running from his eyelashes like he was crying and of course he was fucking crying but he did  _not_ get to do that.

Didn’t get the luxury of feeling sad when he’d done it again. Like he didn’t know what ‘no’ meant. Like, really, he had no respect for anything Zhengxi might feel; might want.

And it was becoming  _so_ obvious that, whatever Zhengxi had been thinking and wanting lately, it was not him.

He didn’t know why, apparently, that was something he was having such difficulty grasping. Like a child clinging to the belief that fairytales were ancient history and every present at Christmas was from a fat white guy with a beard. Because all of that was fucking stupid. It was the encouragement of a developing imagination that, when he got to his age, should have seemed stupid now.

So why had he grown up thinking he and Zhengxi might get married one day and that they’d spend their lives together – had they only been talking about Iceland an hour ago? Two? He didn’t know how long he’d been walking to He Tian’s or how long he’d been standing in the shower – and that school and university and work would all be things that Jian Yi did with him.

How disorientating, how disjointed everything seemed now that he was having to realise that, like fairies and mermaids and Easter rabbits, it was something that had been nice, as a child, to think about, but didn’t work in the reality of the life he was living in now. Had to live.

And why couldn’t he accept that? That holding onto it was driving them apart – he’d already done this once before he left, saw how it wedged between them and made things awkward and uncomfortable and strange – that he was forcing something onto Zhengxi that he might not have wanted; that he didn’t actually feel.

He couldn’t keep thinking about it anymore (didn’t mean he stopped), because his body was aching from the cold now and it was starting to fade a faint, silvery blue as his veins stood out and froze beneath the water.

He pressed a button to turn the shower off, dried himself with a towel until his skin was dry and his hair stood up and looked stupid. The clothes He Tian told him to wear were soft and slouchy and weirdly comfortable and made him want to go to sleep.

When he came back into the kitchen, bare feet padding along the cold floor, they were still in the kitchen, holding mugs of coffee and looking at each other in a way that made Jian Yi feel like he was interrupting.

‘Better?’ He Tian said. He poured coffee into another mug and pressed it into Jian Yi’s hands and the heat of it was almost burning. He clung to it and let his skin heat.

‘Not really,’ Jian Yi said, sliding into a bar stool.

‘What happened?’ Red asked.

‘I kissed him.’

‘Oh.’

There was silence for a few seconds. Red put his mug down on the side. ‘I should go,’ he said.

‘Stay,’ Jian Yi said, at the same time as He Tian said, ‘Don’t go.’

‘I can’t,’ Red said.

‘Why not?’ He Tian said.

‘I’ve got a thing.’

‘A thing?’

‘Yeah. The garage wanted me to go for an interview.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘I didn’t think it was important.’

‘Of course it is.’

Red swallowed, looked down. ‘I didn’t want you to be hopeful and then I wouldn’t get it.’

At this, He Tian only stared. And then: ‘It’s nearly ten.’

‘Well it was for a night shift job, so…’

‘Whatever,’ He Tian said. ‘Take my jacket. It’s cold outside.’

And Red looked at him like he wanted to sigh or tell him no just so he could, but eventually he shrugged and picked up the jacket that lay on one of the sofas.

‘Good luck with, er, whatever,’ Red said, and Jian Yi nodded in vague thanks, mostly because he thought that ‘whatever’ was actually a pretty accurate term for what any of this  _was_.

He Tian walked with him into the hallway, and Jian Yi tried not to listen but couldn’t help it as they exchanged a murmur of words that were too soft and made Jian Yi ache with want. For a while there was silence, and he thought they were probably kissing, and he found some strange desire in himself to imagine what that looked like. Wondering if it was soft, or if He Tian made it bruising because he seemed like he would. Wondering if Red put his hands on He Tian’s face because it was the only time he could touch him and not feel conscious of it. Wondered if it was deep and breathless or if they turned it into something light and playful because that was all they had to sometimes make things seem  _better._

And then he heard something like a sigh, and the door clicked shut, and He Tian walked back in and because it was He Tian he looked exactly not one bit different than before. Not a hair out of place, black t-shirt smooth like he did his own ironing and didn’t pay someone to do it. His lips didn’t even have much colour to them and Jian Yi wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing, been so desperate for closeness that he was starting to force it onto others.

‘So you kissed him,’ He Tian said, like the conversation hadn’t broken at any point. He leaned against the back counter next to the sink.

‘Yeah. Again.’

‘Again?’

‘In middle school, I…’

And He Tian nodded, a sort of nod of realisation as he drank his coffee. It was rich and bitter and too dark for Jian Yi – he liked it with milk and sugar and syrups that were teeth-aching and of which Zhengxi told him he drank too much.

‘I thought something like that had happened. You were weird around each other for a while. It was fucking exhausting trying to talk to you.’

Jian Yi didn’t remember. Only remembered how he’d been feeling. How things were between him and Zhengxi because that was all that mattered. He felt bad, now, a flash of guilt that he hadn’t noticed He Tian. That even now he was just turning up at his house and using his shower and drinking his coffee because it had seemed like the right thing to do.

‘What happened after?’ he asked him. ‘When you kissed Red?’

‘What happened?’

‘Yeah. Did you still think he might like you? Did you think you’d ruined it?’

He Tian ran a thumb across his lip, like he was feeling the ghost of it. He frowned, a small thing that drew his eyebrows together and made him looked unsettlingly  _serious_.

‘I didn’t think it would go how it did,’ he said. ‘Which is…’ He huffed a laugh that was not amused. ‘A big fucking understatement. I mean. There would have been a better way of going about it than at school and shoving my tongue down his throat but I… I didn’t think, you know? He was just looking at me. I thought we might have been on the same wavelength for a minute.’

‘He didn’t go to school for a week.’

‘No,’ He Tian said, agreeing, voice faint with memory. ‘I don’t know if that was me. Or his mother. Something else. But I thought it was me, because I felt so shit after that it seemed like the only possibility.’

‘Is it selfish to keep thinking about myself?’

‘Yeah. But I did too.’

‘What happened after? You said he thought you were…’

He Tian looked down. ‘I didn’t think he thought that,’ he said, and his voice was small and hallowed. ‘I think there was more to it than just that. But… Fuck it hurt. And I didn’t think it would. I didn’t think what anyone said about me – to me – mattered. And I think – the fact that it hurt meant that it did. Matter. Which, I guess is why I knew there was more. Because he was crying, you know? Really fucking  _hurt_ and scared. Because of me. And later I wondered if the _reason_ he was so upset was because he’d been actually been thinking about me like we could be something. And I’d fucked him up and shown him the wrong version of how we could be.’

‘Did you apologise?’

‘No. I didn’t do anything. I’d realised that maybe it wasn’t something I should keep – keep _prodding_ at. Like everything would be clearer and normal if I kept pushing.’

‘You left him alone.’

He Tian nodded. ‘Yeah. And after a while I could see him wondering why. Because he kept looking at me again. At first like he was waiting for me to do something, waiting for me to hit him back or do something worse, that kind of flinching look. And then I think – I think he was almost _annoyed_ that I was basically ignoring him.’

‘Please tell me he didn’t start liking you because you were playing fucking _hard to get_.’

He Tian laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that. We started fucking because everything was pretty shit and he was being fucked over by a gang and his mother was sick and I was – am – a rich boy who had an issue with being the centre of attention. Or, rather, with _not_ being. And I think maybe we’d had enough. Think maybe he’d had enough of pretending that he didn’t find the whole thing disgusting. He just found it… frightening because he wanted it and nothing else was going his way and he wasn’t what society was telling him he should be so why should he then want something like _that_ as well? Like me.’

‘You didn’t like each other.’

‘No. I liked him. In a way that I could as a sixteen-year-old kid would with someone as… someone like him. I think he hated me.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘I don’t either really. It was… We probably shouldn’t have. We were teenagers. I wasn’t making him happy but I didn’t care because I had him. I got to be with him. Even if it was just fucking and being pretty shit to each other. And that was all I really knew how to do so I think a part of me thought that was being happy.’

Jian Yi imagined it. The roughness of it that wasn’t just about sex. The way words would be barbed and there would be no _care_ about it. No softness. Just reluctance and small pains and the sinking nature of regret that filtered in afterwards. And still wanting it, maybe _because_ it hurt.

‘I don’t want that with Zhengxi,’ he said. ‘I don’t—’

‘No,’ He Tian said. He shrugged. ‘And that’s fine. I think the two of you deserve more than that.’

‘And you don’t?’

‘Maybe we did. But what we deserved is what we’re maybe getting now. So I don’t mind.’

Jian Yi didn’t know what more to say after that. He ran a hand through his hair, still wet and dripping down the back of his neck and making him feel cold again. The coffee was lukewarm and no more pleasant than when it had been hot, and a sort of shivering sickness was starting to creep upon him and he thought it wasn’t just from the rain.

He put his head in his hands, muttered, ‘Fuck me,’ because he still felt lost. ****

And He Tian said, ‘All right.’

Jian Yi lifted his head. Looked at him. ‘Really?’

He Tian shrugged.

‘But I thought…’

And He Tian was watching him. Waiting. There was something… _off_ about it.

And Jian Yi rolled his eyes. ‘Fuck off,’ he said.

‘I just wanted to see what you’d do.’

‘You are such a fucking dick sometimes.’

‘Correction: All the time. And please tell me you’re that desperate that you’d let _me_. That you’re not just waiting for that fucking idiot to relax your libido.’

Jian Yi said nothing.

He Tian stared at him. ‘Seriously?’ he said, when the silence seemed to be fading. ‘ _Never_?’

‘I thought when I came back…’

‘Christ,’ He Tian said. ‘And you thought Zhan would have done the same, huh? Kept himself for you like a fucking virgin princess.’

‘He has. I mean. No. Not _for_ me. I…’

‘You said there was a girl in his bed the night you turned up at his.’

‘There was. But he said they don’t do anything. Just, like, foreplay and shit.’

‘And you believed that.’

‘I want to,’ Jian Yi admitted. ‘Otherwise I don’t know why he’d tell me. Why would he tell me? If he didn’t—if he didn’t feel anything, then why tell me like he’s protecting my fucking sensitivities?’

He Tian’s eyes were narrowed. ‘You just need to get your dick wet,’ he said, lighting up a cigarette. He sucked lightly on the end and blew out a cloud of smoke, eyes dark behind the haze. ‘Hire a girl.’

Jian Yi shook his head, took a drag when He Tian offered it. ‘You’re disgusting,’ he said, with no real seriousness, and He Tian rolled his eyes.

‘ _Come now, Son_ ,’ he said, voice deep and mimicking and it was a moment before Jian Yi realised who it was supposed to be. ‘ _That’s all it’ll take to get those kinds of thoughts out your head_.’

Jian Yi swallowed. ‘Did it?’

‘Don’t know. Never fucked the girl. Gave her the rest of what was in my dad’s wallet though. That was fun. Had my lips around Guan Shan’s cock an hour later. The irony was… deeply satisfying.’

Jian Yi didn’t blink at the crudeness of it. It had never shocked him. It was the softer things, the quietness of _feelings_ and _emotions_ , the things that lay further beneath the surface that used to (still did) make him blush. ‘And have you ever… With a girl…’

He Tian offered him a sly smirk, the kind of look that made Jian Yi feel so much younger than him. He always had, really, because He Tian had been the one he’d gone to to get him out of school; He Tian was the tall one that could put his arm around his shoulders and it wouldn’t be uncomfortable. He Tian was the one that used to touch him because it didn’t really mean anything even if his words were coated and his eyes were bright, old enough that he was comfortable and relaxed enough to do it, hand in his hair, on his waist. And Jian Yi remembered that he had only been fifteen, giving easy compliments and easier smiles and walking around the school with his hands in other people’s pockets as they walked because he carried that easy sexuality about him that was oddly inspiring.

‘I thought this was about you,’ He Tian said.

His eyes were narrowed behind the smoke. He took another drag, passed it back to Jian Yi who didn’t want anymore, and pressed it, half-finished, into the glass base of an ash tray that needed emptying. He’d professed drunkenly the week before that he was quitting, and Jian Yi saw how well that was going for him. Wondered if the questions he was asking of him, the memories he was making him relive, were forcing him back into the habit.

When Jian Yi didn’t reply, he sighed. ‘Look, Jian Yi… I don’t think you’re stupid for wanting this. I think… Zhengxi’s not being clear with you. Maybe.’

‘I don’t want to keep assuming.’

‘Then ask him straight. Pun unintended.’

Jian Yi ignored that. ‘I don’t think he even knows,’ he said. ‘When we talked about it it’s riddled and complex and it’s so fucking vague that I wonder if we’re even talking about the same thing.’

‘So ask him.’

‘I can’t. He doesn’t get it. He thinks I’m still gay, for god’s sake.’

He Tian, at first, did not seem to hear what he said, because he just nodded. But then his head stopped, jerked, and he passed him a bewildered look.

‘Say that again,’ he said.

‘I’m not—I’m not gay, He Tian.’

‘So you’re bi?’

‘No…’

‘Right. Help me out here, Jian Yi.’

And he did. Said, quite simply, ‘It’s just him. It’s always just been him.’

He didn’t know what kind of expression He Tian was wearing. Thought it might have been pity. Or sympathy. Thought maybe it was something entirely new. But it made him feel _so_ sad because of the way he seemed to understand. Like, at last, someone _got it._ And that person hadn’t been Zhengxi.

Before Jian Yi could respond, the ringtone of a phone cut through the steady silence.

He Tian raised his eyebrows as he pulled it from his pocket.

‘Yeah?’ he said, phone to his ear. His eyes, for a few seconds, flickered to Jian Yi’s. ‘Yeah, he’s here,’ he said, and Jian Yi felt his heart pound like it was stuck in his throat. ‘Probably not. Unless you want to talk to him.’ He paused, listening. ‘Well you could bring his phone here. Or you could wait. It’s up to you.’

Jian Yi realised he had left his phone there at the same time he realised what He Tian was asking him: _Do you want to face him, to see him, or do you want time?_ And there was no judgment in He Tian’s voice. He wasn’t taking sides, and Jian Yi felt bad for wishing he would, and worse for not realising that He Tian was capable of that kind of evenness. That kind of fairness that felt so _adult_. Adult, to Jian Yi, had become synonymous with heroin and automatics, and he didn’t think that was quite right.

He wondered when He Tian had grown up, where he’d been when it had happened.

‘I’ll tell him,’ He Tian said now. And then he hung up. ‘He said can you get it tom­­—’

‘Yes,’ Jian Yi blurted. ‘Yes. I can do that. Yeah. Tomorrow.’

He Tian nodded, slow, sensing the way Jian Yi’s words stumbled over them in their awkwardness. In their eagerness. Because Zhengxi wasn’t saying no. Wasn’t saying anything but _Give me time._ And Jian Yi, desperately, knew that he’d give Zhengxi anything if it meant he got to see him again. Start again. Maybe, this time, not fuck up again.

‘Don’t—don’t waste yourself on him, Jian Yi,’ He Tian said. ‘I meant it when I said you deserved something good.’

‘He’s not a waste.’

‘Jian Yi—’

‘If I told you that back then. About Red. What would you say?’

‘Probably tell you to fuck off and let me make my own bad decisions.’

‘Well then.’

‘But I’m past that now. I’ve got the benefit of hindsight or whatever the fuck it’s called.’

Jian Yi pulled a face. ‘You’re trying to say you’re _wise?_ ’

‘I’m trying to say that—that I’m happy. That things are going _right_. And that things can be like that for you too.’

‘I’m… glad,’ Jian Yi said, because this was awkward and they’d never really done this. ‘You seem okay together. Good.’

And He Tian turned his back, rinsed his empty mug out in the sink. He said, ‘Yeah. I think so,’ and Jian Yi heard the smile in his voice and wondered when he’d get to have that too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150085715214/aphorism-xxii-a-19-days-fanfic


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150136973749/aphorism-xxiii-a-19-days-fanfic

In the last week of October Guan Shan went to an Italian restaurant in Nanjing that served pretty good Amatriciana and even better biscotti. It also happened to be in a basement so there were no windows and too many yellow light strips and the obnoxious opera music meant conversations were never really heard. It meant, too, that the waitresses were too busy talking to the boys in the kitchen to really care that a lot of their customers used the place to sell drugs.

Well, in fact, Dai Lin would say that they weren’t selling drugs but rather conducting a generally frowned-upon, socially unacceptable but financially _viable_ business transaction. Which was also to say that Dai Lin talked a lot of shit.

Five tables were taken up with his crew, and another four with gang members from X. Given that there were only ten tables in the whole restaurant – mostly because it was small and apparently used to serve cheap alcohol to the KMT in the Second World War and because the owner lacked a lot of ambition other than serving pasta – the staff really should have noticed the dubious clientele.

But given how well Guan Shan knew the quality of the customer service the restaurant, he probably should have noticed the sudden attention the staff were giving him and how the girl serving their table kept glancing at the stairs. He’d thought, naively, that she was eager for the end of her shift.

Because Guan Shan kept looking at the stairs, too, waiting for Dai Lin to stop fucking talking and eat his fucking carbonara and accept the fucking deal and let them all _leave_.

But Dai Lin didn’t. Because he’d always liked this bit. The socialising. The bit where he got to pretend he was some sort of mob king, and Guan Shan had to sit quiet and pretend that he was like a chained dog with a muzzle: quiet, subservient, ready to put his jaws around their necks if they moved too fast.

‘We’ll give you ten kilos of coke for fifteen smack.’

Dai Lin pretended to consider this, twirling pasta around a fork (it was a fumbling, awkward gesture that reminded Guan Shan of a monkey playing with a twig), as the leader of X watched and quirked an eyebrow.

She was a short woman, plump and utterly plain. Didn’t seem to wear any make-up. Wore black jeans and a black t-shirt and a black pea coat. Ordered the gnocchi because that’s what she always had, apparently. She was remarkably unimpressive, but Guan Shan supposed this was probably the point.

The opera music was getting loud as it neared the finally, vibrato almost shaking the glasses of water on the table, and really it ridiculed the whole thing and made Guan Shan wondering what the fuck he was doing.

‘Fifteen kilos for sixteen,’ Dai Lin said. He had to raise his voice a little because the singer was practically shouting in Italian through the speakers, but with a voice high enough like she’d just sucked on a tank of NOS.

‘That’s not really how this works, Dai Lin,’ the woman from X said. ‘I may as well leave.’

‘All right then.’

She raised an eyebrow. The song was building to a last, destructive crescendo.

‘Fine,’ Dai Lin said, hands raised theatrically like he was about to start joining in with the singing. Out the corner of his eye, Guan Shan could see two of the waitresses pointing at them by the stairs. ‘Fifteen for seventeen.’

‘Dai Lin.’

‘Eighteen. Final offer.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘You’re such a waste of my time,’ she said, and the girls were looking up the stairs like someone was coming down. ‘But fine.’

Dai Lin nodded. He slurped up the rest of his pasta and wiped his mouth with a starch white serviette. ‘Want me to sign something?’ he said. No one was coming down the stairs, and Guan Shan thought he could see shadows lurking. One of the girls checked her phone. ‘You and your fucking fondness for documentation. Guess that explains how you won most things in the divorce.’

‘Sign it when you pick the kids up on Sunday. A signature on a napkin will do for—’

‘Don’t sign anything.’

There was a sharp silence, because the music had stopped, and they looked at him, and Guan Shan realised he’d spoken.

‘Pardon me?’ the woman said. She wore a polite expression that said _did it just_ _speak_?

Guan Shan swallowed. ‘I think the police are here.’

* * *

‘For fuck—Who the _fuck_ leaked?’

‘Red? Was it you?’

‘ _No_.’

‘ _Was it you_?’

‘I said no! Fucking hell. Why would I?’

‘You left last time.’

‘Yeah. I left. This time I could have been caught with you. I’m not fucking stupid.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Dai Lin said. ‘You’re too smart sometimes. Makes it difficult to trust you.’

Guan Shan glared at him. He’d been the one to notice. He’d been the one to leave last while they went up the back staircase through the kitchen and climbed into the cars that hovered in the freezing alley. He’d been the one to tell them to go to the motel so the police didn’t follow them back to the base.

Which was why he got to stand by the door and Dai Lin got to sit on the bed with his hands loosely linked between his knees. And Yuan Jung sat in the chair at the desk and Ah Lam got to lean against the dresser. Because they’d gotten out and shared the same car, and the others had split up over the city, and the women from X had said she’d be in touch as she slipped into the back seat of a blacked-out Mercedes, and the police would get nothing when they finally went down the stairs too late to empty bowls of pasta and dirty napkins and pocket change strewn across the table.

And he didn’t have to. Could have sat there. Waited. Not said anything.

And they were turning on _him_?

‘Then if it’s so difficult why did you ask me back, huh?’ he said. Felt his words come out quiet. Like he was fucking hurt by this.

‘We fucking shouldn’t have.’

‘Shut up, Yuan Jung,’ Dai Lin said.  

‘How do we know he’s not a narc?’ Yuan Jung countered. He wasn’t much older than Guan Shan; acted like he was much younger. Slouched in the chair with a petulant look on his round face that made him look sullen and cruel.

‘Because he’s not, all right?’ said Dai Lin. ‘I don’t want a fucking scapegoat. I want to know who told the fucking police.’

Guan Shan tugged a hand through his hair. It was getting long at the sides now, the colour almost a burnt red like dying leaves that broken underfoot. ‘When was the meet set up?’ he said.

‘An hour before,’ said Dai Lin. ‘Standard practice, you know. Standard practice.’

‘Who contacted X?’

‘I did.’ It was Ah Lam who said this. She’d been with the gang longer than Dai Lin; didn’t have the ambition to be the leader. Didn’t have the cruelty in her to screw them all over this long. Not when she’d been with them so long. ‘I didn’t snitch. I swear.’

‘How do we know it wasn’t X?’ Yuan Jung said, because none of them were going to question Ah Lam further. If it was anyone else, they might have. But she had the constant effect of seeming like a sister, a mediator, a mother to them all. Except, maybe, to Guan Shan, who didn’t much care for her weak-will and feeble voice and sallow, aging skin that said she’d probably smoked more than what she sold.

‘Because they all came,’ Guan Shan said. ‘If they were going to rat us out they wouldn’t even have come.’

‘But it might have been one of their own,’ Dai Lin said. ‘Ge Jing and I divorced for a reason.’

‘Maybe,’ said Guan Shan. He bit his lip. ‘How long have you had your phone, Ah Lam?’

She gave him an odd look. They all did. ‘About a week. My last one broke.’

‘And you’re on the same number?’

‘No, I got a new SIM card. My contract was out anyway.’

‘Where from?’

‘What?’

‘Where did you buy it from?’

‘I don’t know. A shop. The newsagents by my apartment?’

‘You know who works there.’

‘What? Yes, I—What the fuck is this all about, Red?’

‘Yeah,’ Dai Lin said, frowning. ‘What the fuck _is_ this all about.’

‘Ah Lam’s been here longer than any of us.’

‘So?’

‘So if the police were going to use someone, they’d use someone we know. Someone who’s been here longer than us. Someone we trust.’

Ah Lam let her hands fist by her sides. ‘I told you I _didn’t_.’

‘I’m not saying that,’ Guan Shan said, patient, because she was also oddly petulant and Guan Shan thought it said something that Dai Lin surrounded himself with people that spoke and acted like children. ‘I’m saying you’re an easy target for them to tap. They might have been watching you. Nudged you as you got off the train so you broke your phone. Knew you’d have to get a new SIM if your contract was about to run out.’

‘You’re saying they tapped my phone?’

‘No. They don’t need to do that anymore. Newsagents register what SIM cards people buy; the police could just ask them for the records and they’d have access to your phone number. If you’ve got a contract they can use your service provider’s records of your messages and the calls your making. The police can do that. And so can big security companies.’

They looked dubiously at the phone in her hand, like it was a bomb about to go off but they didn’t know when.

‘I might be wrong,’ he said, shrugging. ‘But it’s not surprising they want to monitor us. We’re drawing attention to ourselves now that we’re branching out.’

‘How do you know this?’ Dai Lin said. He was looking at him oddly.

‘Huh?’

‘Why would you think about that kind of… surveillance?’

Guan Shan shrugged again, looked at the floor. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Too much crime drama TV I guess.’

And Ah Lam laughed, and Yuan Jung rolled his eyes, and even though Dai Lin was still watching him there wasn’t anything else he could really say.

Before he left, because Dai Lin hung about and made calls and swore down the phone to who Guan Shan supposed was his ex-wife, he asked him about the money.

‘What money?’

‘The money you’re paying me for going with you.’

Dai Lin looked up from his phone, fingers hovering over the keypad. ‘What?’ he said.

Guan Shan stood, didn’t leave even if he probably should have. Should have gone when the other two slipped out and relinquished any sort of responsibility. He told them to start using phones with credit and numbers that could change easily. Told them to only use an old phone for work. Thought about how bizarre it was that he was calling it work but he had to call it something to he could legitimise the fact that he _should_ be getting paid so he could keep on top of his ma’s hospital bills.

‘You said you’d pay me after the deal.’

‘Yeah,’ said Dai Lin. Slowly. Like _Guan Shan_ was slow. ‘ _After_ the deal. That wasn’t a deal. That was a fucking shambles. It’ll take weeks before she signs with us now.’

‘You owe me.’

‘I don’t owe you shit. You were saving your own skin as much as anyone else’s back there.’

‘I could have got up and left you there.’

‘I can’t do _shit_ with your _I could haves_ , Red.’

Guan Shan swallowed; tried to push down the anger and the nervousness because he was imagining red writing on letters on the door mat. Imagining his ma’s confused voice when she asked what they were for when he’d told her the costs were almost nothing and he had a job now. Realising that his job was the same stupid shit he used to pull when he was a kid and that he hadn’t grown up the way she’d probably wanted him to – just exactly how she’d maybe _expected_ him to – and that he was hanging of the flimsy promises of something like Dai Lin.  

‘I want my money, Dai Lin,’ he said. ‘I need to buy meds for my ma.’

Dai Lin shrugged. ‘Not my problem, kid. Your fault for waiting out on something that’s never a certainty.’

‘You _said_ —’

‘Don’t fucking try me with _you said’s_ , Red,’ he said, face twisting into something unpleasant and that Red remembered coming somewhere before or after the feeling of knuckles hitting his jaw. ‘You want money fast, you know what you can do.’

‘I said I didn’t do that anymore. Not after last time.’

‘ _Like I said_. Not my _problem_.’

Guan Shan gritted his teeth. ‘You’re a piece of shit,’ he told him, because he didn’t care much what he said anymore, and he supposed that was the difference between Dai Lin getting up and kicking him until his ribs broke, and just sitting on the bed with his phone in his hands and watching him. Because he only did the latter, and barely even blinked.

‘See you soon, Red,’ Dai Lin said. His voice had a dull ring to it.

Guan Shan told him to fuck off.

 

* * *

 

The last week of October also saw the Double Ninth Day. People went to high places. Some people got high. Most people drank until they shook and saw it as the badness leaving them. The idea was that, on that day, the Yang number was at its highest, which meant that, on that day, the country was smothered in a fog of darkness and unseen dangers that you had the opportunity to escape for a few hours.

Some didn’t bother; just watched TV in bed with crumbs in the sheets and let the heat of their bodies warm up the cold window panes and ignore the neighbours that would tell them that Yang was watching and waiting and seeping.

Some took it seriously, because the air seemed to have a thickness about it as autumn reached its fiery peak, went and climbed fucking mountains and ended up breaking their ankles to get a breath of air that was fresh and pure for a few moments.

Others ate cake and drank too much chrysanthemum wine and climbed somewhere that was high enough for a woollen head and shaking limbs and laughter that was stumbling and wild. Zhengxi and Jian Yi were unfortunate advocates for this idea, because they knew a spot where you could look over the city and be alone, and because they were alone (He Tian was working; Red was sleeping) they had to be more drunk than they had been for a while to endure it.

The whole thing was funnier than it should have been, looking down on a city that, really, looked so small from where they sat when they knew how easily it could swallow them up when they got much closer. Zhengxi had had to carry Jian Yi up the last half a mile because he’d thrown up and couldn’t stop laughing and it meant that Zhengxi had to pay attention to where he was going now that Jian Yi was one his back, and it had the disorienting feeling of making him feel more sober.

They had palms scratched from thorns and bites on their ankles and Jian Yi had a bruise already purpling on his face where he hadn’t ducked for a branch, and already the second bottle of wine they’d bought from the shop by Jian Yi’s high school was almost empty and they felt warm on the inside and hazy on the outside, skin cold but the blood underneath it hot and confused.

When they reached the top, at last, the sky was fading fast, pink stretching across the sky, and neither said that it felt like no time had passed because they didn’t need to, and because Jian Yi still felt sick and Zhengxi thought he’d fall asleep if he shut his eyes again, head rocking backwards with every blink.

‘’M gonna be sick again,’ Jian Yi said, because he couldn’t take his liquor and apparently someone had snuck in a bottle of rice wine that he’d been sipping at through his classes. So when Zhengxi had stumbled up to the school gates already feeling a little _wobbly,_ it was no more and certainly no less than how Jian Yi looked with a shit-eating grin on his face and using three other students as a crutch.

‘Don’t,’ Zhengxi told him now, tongue feeling awfully thick and getting stuck around syllables and consonants. ‘You haven’t even finished your bottle.’

‘I think the spirits would be _veeeery_ dis’pointed in me.’ He finished this with something between a hiccup and a burp, but didn’t throw up over the edge of the cliff. Which was good.

‘Impossible,’ Zhengxi declared. ‘You’re the most least disappointing… Most undisappointing… _Best_ person I know. _That_ _I know_.’

This was apparently funny, because Jian Yi was laughing, and didn’t seem to be able to stop, and he felt weird and shaky like he was thrumming with something that wasn’t just alcohol. Like he was shivering from the cold but didn’t feel it. Should have felt it. His teeth were chattering and his fingers felt like they were dancing and he couldn’t sit still.

‘How’d you even… How’d you even _find_ this place?’ he said.

Zhengxi looked around, like he was trying to figure out what _this place_ was, like, for a moment, he’d gotten lost in the darkening civilisation below them, lights blinking on like it was the slow lightning of a Christmas tree, and didn’t really know where he was anymore.

‘Internet,’ he said. Shrugging.

‘Internet?’

‘Yeah. Top twen— _top._ _Ten_. _Places_ to take your girlfriend in Ning.’

Jian Yi blinked. ‘Girlfriend?’ he said. ‘Who is she?’

And then Zhengxi was confused, too. He jabbed Jian Yi in the shoulder pretty hard, but Jian Yi didn’t really notice because of the wine and because he didn’t think he was drunk enough to remember a girl on the edges of their middle school lives.

‘ _You_ ,’ Zhengxi said. ‘Fuckin’ idiot.’

‘But I’m not your girlfriend.’

‘So stupid,’ Zhengxi said.

‘Why can’t I be your boyfriend? Why’d I have to be the girl?’

‘I dunno. ‘Cause you look like one?’

‘That’s lying.’

‘That’s _truthing_.’

‘You’re just making words up now.’

Zhengxi rolled his eyes. He didn’t really care. The last mouthful of wine was sliding down his throat and he couldn’t taste it much anymore, the synthetic lightness of what he supposed was meant to be something that tasted of flowers, because his tongue was feeling numb and it was just drinking. Just getting drunk.

‘Think we’re cleansed now?’ he said. ‘Think the spirits have gone?’

‘I think we’re fucking—we’re fucking _filthy_.’

Their laughter boomed in the way that drunken laughter did: obnoxious, faultlessly abandoned with a wildness that rivalled nature around them and dark enough to slip into the city below. Loud and wild just to be loud and wild, to make sure people heard them. Let them know they were enjoying a feature of humanity of finding things funny, the inclusive elitism of letting _other_ people know that they weren’t in on the joke. It was all throat – hollow and echoing.

And when it finished, Zhengxi pulled himself up from the ground where he’d fallen back and said, again, ‘Do you think we’re cleansed?’

‘Of what?’

‘Dunno. The badness.’

‘I like badness.’

‘That’s ‘cause you’re a fuckin’ _idiot._ ’

‘You gonna be an idiot too?’ Jian Yi said. ‘Or you gonna go and get cleansed and be white and pretty and leave me in the dark?’

‘Thought you liked being in the dark.’

‘I like it when you’re with me in the dark.’

‘I like it when I’m with you.’

‘In the dark?’ Jian Yi said.

‘I like it when I’m with you.’

‘Can I kiss you?’

‘If you want.’

‘Do you want me to?’

‘I think so.’

‘You gonna hit me again if I do?’

‘I’m too drunk. I think I want you to.’

‘Hit you?’

‘Kiss me.’

Maybe it was good that it finally happened on the Double Ninth Night, because they both tasted like flowers.

There was a sharpness on Jian Yi’s tongue like acid and Zhengxi thought the flowers tasted too sweet like the syrup in Jian Yi’s coffee. But the taste was enough to make his tongue go searching into the flesh of his cheeks and his teeth and enough that his lips were almost bruising. And they were bruising each other because they didn’t feel it hurting and didn’t feel the cold but clung to each other like they did. And they were pulling on each other’s hair and strands would be missing tomorrow and the light was fading and they’d be in darkness soon and maybe that was better so that when they opened their eyes and looked at each other they couldn’t see the violence in them that burned.

The lips bloody and red, the eyes that were ringed with something that whispered of darkness and their breaths heaving from lungs that felt scorched.

‘Oh right,’ said Zhengxi.

And Jian Yi clutched his mouth before he stumbled away to throw up again somewhere in the bushes.

And Zhengxi sat there for a while and didn’t really want to listen to him retch so he ran his fingers through the grass and thought it didn’t feel as soft as Jian Yi’s hair, and looked at the lights and thought they didn’t seem as bright as the way things in his head had done a minute ago, like he was lit up from the inside. Lit up like the solemnness of a candle in a church and also like a blowtorch.

It would be pretty accurate to say that things hadn’t quite hit him yet. But he’d wait for the morning and the hangover to deal with all his mistakes. (Mistakes?)

Jian Yi came back, after a while, and his skin looked pale and his grin was shaking at the edges and he moved like he was an animal hit with a tranquiliser, stumbling and not yet gone down.

He fell down next to Zhengxi, all limbs and elbows and knees and no distance, and said, ‘We can kiss again now.’

‘You just threw up.’

‘It’s fine,’ Jian Yi said. Because at least time he wasn’t crying and it wasn’t messy like _that_.

And Zhengxi would be disgusted with himself and the whole thing tomorrow because it was easy to have that kind of drunken lack of responsibility for the actions that were happening now, and he said, ‘All right then.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150136973749/aphorism-xxiii-a-19-days-fanfic


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150182331269/aphorism-xxiv-a-19-days-fanfic

The morning was cold but it should have felt colder.

Jian Yi supposed it had to do with the body (warm, sleeping, peculiarly serene) that lay next to him, and it was some small disappointment that he realised Zhengxi did not snore and looked rather too perfect – rather too much like something Jian Yi longed to wake up with for the rest of his life – and this was going to prove difficult when the inevitable _leaving_ happened.

He was curled in on himself, cheek pressed into the pillow, limbs bent inwards like he was holding something to his chest, protecting something. He had lines on his skin, pillow marks and creases from the t-shirt he’d worn yesterday and wore to bed. His mouth had fallen open, slightly, and when Jian Yi pressed close he could feel the warmth of his breath on his face.

He didn’t want to move, but he did, because then he could sit next to him on the bed and watch him and imagine this was something different than a drunken sleepover where they’d kissed and been pretty stupid and everything had been ripped back until it was raw and too simple for anything they’d ever been used to.

He touched the back of Zhengxi’s hand, curled up against his face, felt the bones under the skin that felt so fragile and shallow, felt the bump of veins that ran along of his hands, raised like tiny rivers on a map, like the veins on fragmenting leaves. He touched his hair, and it was softer and patches were sticky with the wine Jian Yi had spilled on his head when he carried him. Like they’d been fifteen again.

Except the whole thing had had that sharp quality to it – that aching that reminded them that they couldn’t make the same sort of mistakes anymore. Couldn’t have that same starlit, breathless innocence anymore. Because they were older now. Not really much wiser. But apologies had to _mean_ more now and they had to be careful how they did things because, somehow, growing older meant getting a little more fragile. A little more susceptible.

He sat there, back curved, watched him as a dusky morning light crept beneath the curtains, hazy and grey-blue and making the room seem timeless in its stillness, in its dimness, like Jian Yi was dreaming. Before he moved, in the hours that he lay there, still, barely breathing in case he woke him, he wondered if he was dreaming, because it had that sense of impermanence to it. That sense that something was readying itself to become _real_ , and Jian Yi didn’t want it to. Didn’t want to have to wake up from a dream that was life for a few hours.

But he had to. Because he had to think about how they’d kissed, how he felt now only the vague pressure of it, how it was so fucking typical that that time it happened was a time he couldn’t really cherish. He had to think about how it wasn’t perfect, and if that mattered, and if that _changed_ things. Because growing up he’d maybe had an idea in his head of how it would be. But he thought now that it didn’t really matter because the image, he realised, was only just Zhengxi. Only him. Didn’t have to be more. Didn’t have to be the fucking botanical gardens or a sunset on a beach in Thailand or in that breathless moment after a film finished and everyone sat in silence and the lights hadn’t yet lifted, that moment where you had to come back to reality.

It didn’t matter that, instead, it had been the place where they’d made promises and wishes to each other when they were young and pretty stupid and they’d not really known what they were doing – themselves, with each other – and the wine had made the whole thing taste like potpourri and Jian Yi had been throwing up because his hangover always happened at the same time as he got dunk and he couldn’t remember coming back or getting a taxi.

It didn’t matter because Zhengxi had said he’d wanted it and because he was there now. Still there. Hadn’t left; just slept because he must have thought he was okay and that he was _safe_ with him.

And really, the whole thing broke Jian Yi’s heart, because he thought about all the times he’d fucked up. All the times he’d spoiled it and twisted and made it wrong and all the times he hadn’t deserved Zhengxi. He thought about the times Zhengxi had forgiven him even if he probably shouldn’t, how he’d kept coming back to him if even if he probably shouldn’t. He thought about the week before, how he’d just left and hadn’t really listened to Zhengxi, and probably should’ve.

‘It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to,’ Zhengxi told him, when he went to get his phone, had left it on the floor to blink in the darkness and Zhengxi promised he hadn’t touched it. ‘It was that you didn’t ask. I wanted you to ask. And then you just left and I couldn’t tell you.’

And Jian Yi felt the tugging sensation of wanting to burst and wanting to shrink away: some wild, glorious abandon at the idea that Zhengxi wouldn’t have said no. Some quiet, uncomfortable idea that again Jian Yi hadn’t given him the chance.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jian Yi had said, and he’d said it for the whole week. Text him at 4 AM with an apology and sent him flowers (that’s what people did, didn’t they?); bought him a new game and put notes under his door until Zhengxi had wanted to hit him because he didn’t want that.

‘Just ask next time, okay?’ he’d said.

_Next time._

And Jian Yi had had to leave again because he thought he might cry because _next time_.

And he’d spent the rest of the week wondering when. If he was supposed to ask. If Zhengxi would do it or if he didn’t have that kind of confidence. Like he’d be sure that it would always be Jian Yi to lean in and touch his jaw and lift his face so they were really _looking_ at each other and didn’t have their eyes closed.

And by Friday Zhengxi had said, ‘Why don’t we get drunk on Double Ninth?’

‘But I don’t drink,’ Jian Yi had said.

‘You should. I’ll be drunk. If I kiss you it won’t be as bad then.’

So Jian Yi didn’t mind when the kids at the back of the class were passing round liquor and he drank twice as much as anyone else. Didn’t mind that Zhengxi was saying he had to be _drunk_ to kiss him because he’d be drunk too and every time they’d kissed Jian Yi had made it wrong so something still not being quite right between them was better.

And now here he was, sheet lines on his skin like matching up a constellation, looking for a moment exactly as he had before Jian Yi had left.

When he had left.

Because he’d lied to him.

Told him he never got the chance to say goodbye when he had. Climbed through his window because he knew where he lived then and what room was his. They’d waited in the car while he lifted up the window, saw the light beneath the blinds and thought he’d be awake, and instead found him asleep on the floor, console in his lip, head tipped backwards onto the bed as he slept.

And it was how Jian Yi had wanted to leave him. Hadn’t wanted to wake him. Hadn’t wanted to ruin what, to him, looked perfect.

So he just turned the light off in the room and put a blanket on him and when Zhengxi had woken up at the sound of the window latch closing, the room had been empty, and cold, and it was like Jian Yi had never been.

Jian Yi, now, was trying to fathom how it was possible that he got to have this. That he got to be next to him, to be the first thing he saw when he woke up. And that small part of him was fucking terrified because what if he just shied back, shrunk away like he remembered everything and not with the muddled, hazy warmth that Jian Yi did?

 _He kissed you_ , he told himself. _Wanted to kiss you. That means something._

And he was still telling this to himself when he heard a low buzz from the floor, pulling himself so slowly off the bed until he found the phone in his jeans pocket. Didn’t, at that moment, register that they’d both taken their trousers off and their legs had been wrapped up in each other’s and he pressed the green button.

‘You’re ruining my life, Feng,’ he said quietly. ‘Literally.’

‘He wants you in Hong Kong.’ 

‘Who?’

‘Jen Ta.’

Jian Yi gritted his teeth at the name.

‘Tell him that he and Hong Kong can go fuck itself.’

‘14K are offering a treaty.’

‘We’re the fucking Triad, Feng. We don’t do treaties with each other.’

‘Then take the fucking bloody rag that they’re waving at us for peace.’

‘I’m not interested.’

Feng made an irritated sound down the phone, the kind of sound Jian Yi was familiar with. ‘Jian Yi.  _God_. I don’t think it really matters if you’re not. We’ve got twenty thousand people in this organisation who could benefit from this. This has been on the line for five years and now you’re going to screw us all over?’

If he could see him he would have stared. ‘You’re surprised that I’d be _happy_ with that turn of events?’ 

‘Jian Yi—’ 

‘Isn’t Jen Ta there already? Or Zhao? Get him to do it. He’s been sucking off 14K for years.’ 

Feng’s voice came so dry over the phone. ‘Apparently Jen Ta’s  _skills_ aren’t up to standard,’ he said. ‘They doubt his legitimacy. He never worked closely enough with your father who often worked closely with them. They found out about you and they want to see you.’ 

Jian Yi glanced at Zhengxi, still sleeping. The light was stronger now, city coming back to life around them like they’d had their moment, their pause in some sort of lineal fabric, and now it was time to stitch it back up and become real again. But the light made things stark, morning light always bright and kind of blinding, cutting in its sharpness, and it made Zhengxi’s skin fill up with puzzle pieces of light and dark that Jian Yi wanted to kiss and put back together.

He swallowed, turned around. ‘What if I knew nothing about any of this?’ he said to Feng. ‘What if I was living on a fucking farm in fucking Yunnan?’ 

‘Then they’d probably tell you to put the fucking hoe down and get to fucking Hong Kong, Jian Yi. And you’d do it. Because you’re supposed to with something like this.’ 

‘You have an interesting way of protecting me, Feng. My father would probably have some issues with it.’ 

‘He doesn’t.’ 

Jian Yi paused. Heard the meaning in those words. ‘You speak to him?’ he said, words a little strained.

‘When I can,’ Feng said, and even his words were soft and slightly subdued.

Jian Yi bit his lip. ‘Does he ask about me?’ 

‘Always. He’s wanted to meet you for twenty years, Jian Yi.’ 

‘And he’d—He’d want me to do this?’ 

‘He’d want you to be happy. But he was happy doing what he did. He was happy doing what he thought was a service for China.’ 

‘By killing people. By selling drugs.’ 

Feng only sighed. ‘Don’t be dramatic. The flight leaves at three. I’ll pick you up in an hour.’ 

‘I didn’t say yes. I have school. Zhengxi’s here.’ 

But it didn’t matter what Jian Yi said. Didn’t matter what Feng might have thought about that last bit, wondering why in fact Zhengxi was there at a time like that. Because, in the end, he just said: ‘You don’t, really, have a choice.’

 

* * *

_I had to go. I’m sorry. I hope your head doesn’t hurt too much this morning!_

Zhengxi stared at the note, brushed his fingertips of the imprint of pen into the paper. It lay on the side-table in Jian Yi’s bedroom next to a glass of water that was still cold and a couple of pills that he swallowed with thinking.

A part of him should have expected that Jian Yi wouldn’t be there when he woke up, and it didn’t make his mood brighter when his head was pounding and his stomach ached, but he remembered that he didn’t normally drink rice wine and didn’t normally kiss his best friend.

‘Shit,’ he said to himself, and his voice was kind of hoarse and he needed a piss and knew he wasn’t going to make it to class that morning because his eyes, when he stumbled to the bathroom and caught them in the mirror, were red and bloodshot and his skin had a strange pallor to him and his lips…

He swallowed, stared at himself until he felt, unwillingly, the edges of his mouth start to pull up and he had to hide them behind his hand so he didn’t have to stare at himself smiling like a fucking idiot.

He looked kind of ruined.

Didn’t want to admit that he liked that when all they’d done was _kiss_ and he’d woken up _hard_. Grateful, almost, that Jian Yi wasn’t there because he still wasn’t sure what this was but he knew he liked it and didn’t want to lose himself too quickly. Didn’t want to burn through the novelty in case this was – just – novelty. Just something new.

He knew he wasn’t like that. Wasn’t that fickle and impermanent – that was Jian Yi. But Jian Yi had never been fickle with his affections for him, so maybe they were swapping roles.

He thought he should have felt something that was maybe more than he did. More than the weird tension in his stomach that was both hangover and emotion, more than the quiet acknowledgment that everything their middle school life seemed to have revolved around - everything Jian Yi had kept tight and wound up and tormented - had just happened. And hadn’t it been easy. Should it have been that easy? Wasn’t there supposed to be something more? Fireworks in the distance. Fanfare. Someone jumping out of a cake. Not this quiet clicking into place like the final workings of an algorithm.

It was odd, because he was still smiling when he padded back into Jian Yi’s bedroom and saw his clothes on the floor and he still didn’t quite understand the sensation of it because it fit weirdly on his face, but he was struggling with the reality of it.

He found his phone in the pocket of his jacket, draped over Jian Yi’s desk chair, thankful that he still had it and hadn’t thrown it off the hilltop or left it in the taxi – had they gotten a taxi? – and sent him a text.

> ARE WE GOING TO TALK ABOUT LAST NIGHT?

The reply came about an hour later. He’d put his clothes in the washing machine with Jian Yi’s things that were dotted about the floor, eaten three bowls of sugary cereal with milk that had probably gone sour, and drank almost two litres of water. He’d thrown up once – had to run out the shower – and had to sit in the basin of the shower for another ten minutes after until his skin stopped feeling clammy with hangover and his throat didn’t feel so hoarse.

He’d dressed in a pair of Jian Yi’s pyjamas – an old t-shirt and loose bottoms and borrowed a pair of his underwear because they could do that now right? – rolled his eyes when he saw they were all blue, red and white and Jian Yi had mocked him in middle school for his red tracksuit bottoms.

And then when he was on the sofa and Abel had arranged herself across his legs – she was not small, or light, and he wasn’t sure how long that arrangement was going to last – TV playing a daytime games show, his phone eventually dinged.

> Do you want to? 

Zhengxi swallowed. Did he?

> I DON’T KNOW.

> Do you regret it? 

> NO.

He gritted his teeth, made himself type it.

> DO YOU?

Because a part of him wondered if, now that it had happened, now that it had been consensual and the excitement of the forbidden had past… Was it over? Jian Yi had always been strange. Always had weird obsessions and perversions that weren’t really normal. Always had a darkness to him that Zhengxi hadn’t always wanted to acknowledge.

And he had to wonder, now, how far that went.

> What do you think… I wish I got to see you when you woke up.

The text was innocuous and self-affirming and it made that stupid smile creep up again and Zhengxi hoped he didn’t smile like that when he saw Jian Yi again.

> HOW LONG WILL YOU BE GONE? 

> A day or two. Feng said I might be able to come back on the night flight if things go well. 

> FENG?

A picture came through a moment later. A middle-aged guy in a suit who was built and broad and looked like a boxer. He was wearing a headset and his hands were gripping something that looked like a wheel and Zhengxi realised was a cyclic stick. He could see in the background the glass of the windshield, see through it the vague, hazy outlines of sky and land that were too far away.

> YOU’RE IN A HELICOPTER??? WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING? 

> Hong Kong. With a fuel stop in Jiangxi. (Don’t you think that it sounds like our names together?!) 

Zhengxi had so many questions. But he was beginning to understand what Jian Yi had said when he thought Zhengxi wouldn’t like the answers he gave him. So he said nothing. Just: 

> FLY SAFE… 

> Enjoy class. If you go. And walk Abel for me?

Right. Because that was their life now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150182331269/aphorism-xxiv-a-19-days-fanfic


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150261777644/aphorism-xxv-a-19-days-fanfic

It was the first of November when he gave in. First of November, winter creeping in, that Guan Shan finally caved. Finally did what he always knew he was. Finally stepped into his father’s shoes, and they fit too well. Felt comfortable in the way he had never wanted them to.

It was because of his mother that he finally did it, and he supposed that there was some deep irony in the fact that in trying to protect her he had made it only more likely that – soon – he wouldn’t be able to.

Because suddenly he made himself too valuable. Worth too much. It put the heavy weight of responsibility on his shoulders that he had never wanted. Shouldn’t have been given – not like this. Not when it hurt too much. When he knew that when he looked at He Tian next he might throw up – that his face might twist into something that showed just about everything he was really feeling.

And it was afterwards that he had to put the towel over the mirror. Couldn’t quite _look_ at himself. Couldn’t quite bear the way he looked; the way he was starting to look like his mother. Softer. Weirdly pretty. How he was starting to look at himself and see her eyes staring back. Clouded with doubt and some deep, ill uncertainty that was like she was _knew_ what he had done.

He used to look more like his father, and the hard grimness had brought with it a sort of ugliness that he had never minded. Never minded that people used to mutter as he passed in the hallways – used to shrink back because his personality had to started to match everything else about him.

And then, steadily, that had melted away in a delicateness to his jaw, eyes that caught the sunlight and made them burn – his mother’s eyes had always been light and beautiful – and the dye fading In his hair made him seem muted and so much more _less_ than, maybe, he had ever wanted to be. He hated that the way he looked had to started to accurately reflect this subdued person that he had, consciously, immediately self-aware, become a part of. Like the way he looked sealed some sort of illicit contract. Some deal a part of himself had made that he couldn’t break. He supposed that this… being trapped was why he’d been doing a lot of things lately.

Why, perhaps, he was going to do this.

Dai Lin’s house was a strange thing in a strange neighbourhood. All grey slate and too-clean windows that put everything on show. It wasn’t particularly big, on the west fringes of the city, but it was too much for one person, and owning in a house in the city was something in itself.

He’d been to it, once before, when a bullet had grazed him and he couldn’t see the doctor so Dai Lin and Ah Lam had patched him up with cotton thread and vodka as steriliser and pain relief in his living room. At the time he hadn’t thought about it too much – hadn’t been particularly lucid, but now the whole place felt kind of daunting as he walked up the steps to this _construction_ that was like something out of a sci-fi film. He realised now that it catered perfectly to Dai Lin’s sense of egoist exhibitionism of having everything dangerously available and open.

He rang the bell; it made a sound like the peal of some old English manor. 

He waited, shivering on the doorstep, because the sky was a hazy blue-grey of muted late autumn that felt like winter, and because He Tian’s jacket only felt warm when it had just been peeled off his body. Thrown at Guan Shan like an afterthought, because romantic gestures weren’t really their _thing_. Still had that twinge of nonchalant cruelty about it that they’d always had, but this time they made a mockery of themselves, laughing with some deep irony about what they used to be like. Like, ‘Did we really do that? Did I really used to say that to you?’ Wondering, really, how they were able to be together now.

The door opened, and Dai Lin took him in with a surprised look before some faint irritation lingered there.

‘This is my _house_ , Red,’ he said, hand on the door frame. ‘My kids are here.’

Guan Shan pushed inside. ‘Glad you’ve got the luxury of parting your private life from your work, but not all of us do.’

Inside there was the same blank, stark modernity. Made ostentatious alone by the _lack_ of ornamentation – all harsh lines and cubic rooms, and a staircase, like the flooring, that was hard and industrial grey and felt strange to walk on as Guan Shan toed his shoes off.

‘Red—’

‘You owe me money, Dai Lin,’ he said, stalking into the kitchen, stark and sharp. ‘My ma’s bils have a late payment.’ 

He stopped short when he saw the set of knives laid out on the island counter, a rag and a bottles of oil and WD-40 next to them. In there he could hear the sound of laughter above him, the giggling sound of Dai Lin’s children.

‘ _Seriously_?’ Guan Shan said, turning slowly, pointing at the knives.

‘They know not to touch. Ah-Huang lost part of his little finger when he was four.’

‘You’re fucked up.’

Dai Lin sighed, walked behind the counter and picked up one of the knives, short and serrated and probably not used for cutting bread.

‘This is how you’re trying get me to lend you money?’ he asked, pouring oil over the knife and rubbing at it with the rag.

‘No – Not _lend._ Pay me. Because that’s what your terms were.’

Dai Lin waved the knife in his direction. ‘This conversation is standing to bore me, Red. I liked it when you were a mean little thing with a point to prove.’

Guan shan didn’t know how he felt about Dai Lin summing him up so neatly. He thought it probably said more about his own naïve, youthful predictability than anything about Dai Lin’s abilities of perception.

‘I didn’t,’ Guan Shan said. ‘And I don’t—I don’t have time for your bullshitting anymore. I’m not fucking stupid. I won’t just do this for you for the honour of being _included_.’

‘Kid wants to go on the payroll, does he?’

‘Dai Lin—’

‘Shut up, Guan Shan. You wanted this so you’ll get what I give you.’

‘Then I’ll leave.’

Dai Lin’s look was dry. ‘No. You won’t. If you wanted to you would’ve left already before coming here. Before asking me again.’

‘I’ve got another job somewhere else I can go to just as easily.’

‘No,’ Dai Lin said again. ‘You don’t. You turned it down to come back to us. Which… Telling, huh? Telling.’

Guan Shan gritted his teeth. Pressed his hands into the counter, shoulder blades shifting back. Let his head hang as he let out a breath.

How easy would it be, he wondered, just to pick up a knife and throw it into Dai Lin’s face. It wouldn’t be hard. Wouldn’t take much. A slight reach over, a flick of his wrist. But Dai Lin could block. Would have his wrist pinned and crushed into the stone counter and maybe severed a few fingers.

What could he say to He Tian after? That he dropped a box on it?

And He Tian would go moody and grim and pretend he was angry because Guan Shan wouldn’t be able to jack him off any more and not because he actually _cared_ that much.

‘Don’t think about it,’ Dai Lin said. ‘It won’t work.’

‘It might,’ Guan Shan said.

For a moment they shared a strange tension, and Guan Shan didn’t move because he wasn’t sure he’d get there first, but, really, he probably didn’t move because Dai Lin’s kids were upstairs and probably hadn’t seen that much blood before and Guan Shan being dead or without his hands wouldn’t really be much use to his ma.

‘Let’s be honest with each other, hm, Red?’ Dai Lin said. ‘Let’s be honest. For once.’

‘I’m always honest.’

His laughter was sharp and loud, like a dog bark. ‘No you’re fucking not. You’re a fucking pain in my ass because I can’t ever trust you.’

‘Because I ran?’ he said, remembering the festival, the lanterns, the orange and red glow of light, the smoke from the fireworks, the laughter that clung around the edge of the memory, and then the sirens, the cleavers in bloodied hands, the screams that rose up out of the confusion. And Guan Shan had let his knife fall into a vat of oil for deep-frying rice cakes, and walked away with a bizarre calmness that later he would not be able to explain.

Even now he recognised the strangeness of it, how strange that part of his life had been.

‘Not because you ran,’ Dai Lin said now. ‘Because you don’t fucking _care_ , Red. You never really did. All of this has been about you getting something from it. Gettnig a reputation at school. Pretending you weren’t like your dad. Wanting to get money for your mother.’

‘What,’ Guan Shan said. ‘You’re telling me you do this because of some fucking moralist principles? Give me a break.’

Dai Lin was shaking his head. ‘This isn’t about me, Red,’ he said. ‘This is about you. Keeping shit from me. As fucking usual.’

Guan Shan supposed that Dai Lin wasn’t really used to this kind of irreverence. Was used to people like Ah Lam and Yuan Jang doing what he told them to _because_ he told them to. Not like Guan Shan did. With his suspicions and his mistrust and his skewed loyalty because, really, what had Dai Lin and the others ever really given him?

Hadn’t been there when his old man got locked up. Hadn’t been there when his ma started getting sick and he was barely thirteen and he had to start looking after her. They’d only really sought him out because he was old enough and quick enough at that point that he could probably wield a knife; bitter enough that he wouldn’t really have much of a moral hesitancy about using it.

‘And what am I keeping from you, Dai Lin?’ he asked.

‘Was that fucking rhetorical?’

‘What?’

Dai Lin slammed a knife into the counter, the handle shattering slightly with the force.

At one time Guan Shan would have flinched. But he realised now, after that first fleeting shock of panic when they’d met at the hospital, that he just _wasn’t_ anymore. Maybe because his fears were bigger than that now.

His fears were hospital bills and getting his ma up the stairs. His fears were in his own inadequacies and in the opinion He Tian had of him. His fears, ultimately, had become intrinsically internal but, oddly, his fears no longer lay in the abject possibility of pain, or of death.

Maybe in hindsight they should have been, but now a shattered blade on a kitchen surface meant astoundingly little to him.

Dai Lin stared at him for a while, and then left for a while longer. When he came back he had a stack of something in his arms, which did not take Guan Shan long to realise was cash.

‘All right then,’ Dai Lin said, letting the bundles of notes scatter across the surface. The imagery of them against neat lines of knives was probably not lost on him, but he had always been one for theatrics. ‘You want to get fucking paid, you tell me what you’re not telling me. Because no fucking way did you guess that about Ah Lam’s phone. No fucking way.’

‘What if the truth I give you isn’t the one you want to hear?’ Guan Shan said.

He was looking at the money. Wishing it didn’t have to mean so much to him. His only comfort lay in the fact that he looked at it and saw his ma – not something cheaper and less. _But the_ _whole thing was less._ It was cheap, and more than that, it carried with it a sort of sickness. Something vile and festering that stank of betrayal.

Which is, really, what it would be.

And he used to blame He Tian for a lot of things from when he was younger. Used to blame his attitude and the way he acted with other people and not with him. But the thing was, He Tian had never really lied to him. Not really. Had never abused his trust – his care. His errors had been mistakes – misjudgments that he had been quick so quick to correct.

And when he did things that maybe weren’t _right_ it was because Guan Shan was doing it with him. If He Tian hit Guan Shan when they fucked it was because Guan Shan had hit him first, left bruises on his skin that was remarkably soft. It He Tian swore and said things that left them shaking with spite it was because Guan Shan had said them first. And they’d been shit with one another, because life in general had been shit to them, so they saw in each other some way out. Some relief that was not relief and now, he couldn’t even see it as such.

But they’d held on and rode whatever it was they’d been going through. Grown up, just a bit.  

And now Guan Shan was going to ruin it again – the moment of peace and near-happiness that they’d created. And the worst bit was that he was doing it consciously and he had the choice – the _choice_ – to betray him like this.

He’d always thought their relationship would end because of He Tian. Because he would fuck up, forget that Guan Shan was who he was. Maybe that he’d get bored. Had never really thought that it might instead be because of him.

He supposed, given the circumstances of how his life tended to play out, that he should have expected it.

He looked at Dai Lin, who was smiling with some deep satisfaction, like he’d predicted it all along.

‘I can fight for you,’ Guan Shan said. ‘I said I didn’t anymore but I can be a blade if you—’

‘You can, yeah. But I need more than that now, Red. This isn’t turf wars. We’ve got a meeting set up with a group. It’s not about that anymore. Things are getting big.’

And Guan Shan nodded. Swallowed. Because he knew now that it was only a matter of time and that money could pay for at least half of everything he owed.

‘I can… I know… It’s not the police.’

‘What isn’t?’

‘The surveillance. It’s not the police.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘There’s a company that give people security,’ he said. Why did it feel so easy to let the words come off his tongue? ‘They do surveillance. Have access to police databases and cameras and shit. I know someone who works for them and I’m not… I won’t tell you who. But I can let you know if they’re going to make a move. I can… redirect them. Maybe.’

Dai Lin tilted his head. ‘You’ll be our contact.’

‘It’s all I can offer.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘That’s all. You know I’m—You know I’m not doing this for the same reasons as when I was a kid. I’m not going to pretend this is some sort of patriotic loyalist bullshit. I’m doing this because I need money.’

‘There are other ways of getting money,’ Dai Lin said. He was looking at him strangely, taking in the shape of his cheekbones, his lips, the light muscle definition in his forearms.

‘I’d rather die.’

‘So you’ll betray a friend? You expect me to trust you with this kind of shit when you’re already stabbing your contact in the back.’

‘It’s not like I want to.’

‘Sure. It’s for your mother. Always for your mother. You know,’ he said breezily, ‘the kindness you give her probably isn’t what she deserves.’

Guan Shan took a step forward, hipbones hitting against the edge of the counter. ‘Don’t you fucking _dare_ say a word about my mother.’

‘I’ve known her a long time, Red. Knew her before your father got locked away. You should know that just because they’re your _parents_ doesn’t mean you owe them shit all the time.’

‘You want your kids to think of you that way?’ Guan Shan said. He could hear them running about. Hear the laughter still like some strange cacophony of sound that played ominously against the backdrop of their conversation.

‘No. Because I treat them right. Give them what they need and watch out for them. Not really what yours did, did they? Not really.’

‘You don’t know shit about my life.’

‘That’s a lie,’ Dai Lin said. Sighing. ‘That’s just not true.’

Suddenly Guan Shan didn’t want to be there anymore. Hadn’t wanted to be there at all, but it wasn’t _right_ that he got to stand there in his fancy house with his kids laughing and a stack of cash on the counter. Wasn’t right that Dai Lin got to stand there and say that and talked about his parents like that.

He said, ‘Are you saying yes? Do you want me to do this or not?’

‘Sure. I want you to do it.’

That was all Guan Shan needed. He reached for the cash, put it in the back strapped across his back. Didn’t say thanks, or goodbye, but before he left, Dai Lin called out to him.

‘Hey, Red?’ he said. ‘I’m trusting you with this. If I figure out you’re fucking with us…’

‘I’m not,’ he said.

‘Sure. Then I hope you know what you’re doing with this… _contact_ of yours.’

Guan Shan just nodded. Left the house, door not quite slamming behind him as he stepped onto the cold streets.

Dai Lin hoped he knew what he was doing. With He Tian. Trusted that he had the sense to do all this properly.

Guan Shan shook his head.

What a fucking joke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150261777644/aphorism-xxv-a-19-days-fanfic


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150358943779/aphorism-xxvi-a-19-days-fanfic

Zhengxi’s hands were softer than he thought they’d be. Didn’t know why. Thought maybe they’d be calloused and harsh and that he’d be able to feel the slight rise of scarring from the flesh of his knuckles. But Jian Yi remembered Xixi hadn’t been like Red. Hadn’t been that bad – he’d fought over things that were petty and stupid; fought just to fight and see if he could. Fought to prove a point – usually to him. Usually for him.

But he didn’t really think about fighting when Zhengxi held his hand. Didn’t really think about anything but how soft it was – warm and dry. Impossibly safe. And feeling it, weirdly, was like holding the hand of a brother and a father and a friend; familiar and lingering with the promise of protection. And then Zhengxi would let his thumb run over Jian Yi’s wrist, just to feel the pulse point, to feel the slight hiccup of blood in his veins, and there was nothing familial and safe about it. When he did that it just made him want.

‘You’re nervous?’ Zhengxi said.

Jian Yi let his eyes flicker. Made himself stop thinking about how this sensation of skin on skin was everything they were used to – a familiarity they had known since they were kids – and everything that was new and kind of burning. Made him wonder if it had always been there, under it all. Wondered if Zhengxi might have been feeling what Jian Yi was now all along; thise heat, this vibrancy, this thrum like something was alive in them.

‘A bit,’ Jian Yi said, nodding. Gave a half shrug. Scratched his nose with his free hand. Felt the other squeeze itself around Xixi’s fingers because they could do that now. Touch. Freely.

What a waste all those years stepping around one another had been, when they could have just had this all along.

But Jian Yi knew they couldn’t. Knew something needed to happen for Zhengxi to realise because he wasn’t that confident, sometimes. Didn’t so easily take that kind of wild abandonment; that initiative that Jian Yi had never really thought about too much because he’d just done it.  

They were in a restaurant near the university, darkly lit with expensive furniture and wine that wasn’t sold by the glass. They were sitting in one of the waiting booths while Jian Yi waited for his mother to arrive. She’d sent him an email the day before – first contact they’d had since he got back; more than a month – and Zhengxi said he’d stay with him until he had to leave for classes, or until his mother arrived.

Because she wasn’t usually late, shouldn’t really be this late to see her son again, but then Zhengxi thought that Jian Yi’s mother had always been this strange, elusive creature that he’d only seen once. Only knew about her because of the way Jian Yi spoke about her: with a hesitancy that said he didn’t really know if what he was saying about her was even true, and a kind of longing, an awareness that he wished it wasn’t like that.

Zhengxi remembered the way Jian Yi would watch him and his family when he came over. Annoying his sister like hell but doing it with a gleeful smile. Giving his parents a sort of reverence that later they would tell Zhengxi made them feel kind of uncomfortable. And Zhengxi would have to shrug, because he was his friend, and because… He knew why he did it. Felt like he had to prove to this couple, these strangers, that he could be a good son. If he had to be. If he got the chance. So he wouldn’t apologise to his parents for this, or tell Jian Yi to back down, other than saying, ‘They like you. They think you’re a really good kid.’ Because that was all he really needed to hear. And Jian Yi would smile, hesitant, and nod, hesitant, like he thought perhaps he’d passed some sort of test but he still wasn’t sure.

And the whole thing was, frankly, fucking heartbreaking.

They heard the heels, when the host cast them another glance that said they’d really been waiting to long, and then suddenly she was real and there and in front of them, in this long black dress that made her look so pale and waifish like Jian Yi did sometimes, and Jian Yi was sort of tripping over himself to stand.

They hugged, which Zhengxi thought strange, with a fierceness that said nothing about the distance they’d always had, but their faces were hard and distant and it was like they couldn’t really look at each other because Jian Yi had been gone for two years and his mother was late and it was all so…

Maybe it wasn’t something he could understand. So he slipped away, quietly, because he supposed that maybe he wasn’t supposed to, and this probably wasn’t for him to see.  
  


* * *

 

‘Zhengxi looks well.’

‘He’s doing okay.’

‘And you’re well?’

‘I’m okay, too.’

‘Good,’ she said absently. ‘That’s good.’

She swirled a glass of red wine by the base, picked it up by the stem and took a small mouthful. Everything about her done with a kind of dainty precision that Jian Yi had always been fascinated with. On the rare occasion that she’d cooked for him as a child, everything had been neat and fastidiously prepared, cut into shapes or arranged into something out of an experimental restaurant.

She turned pages of a book with exact movements; sat with a back that was impossibly straight; looked at things with a glance that was unwavering.

It was no small amount of disappointment to Jian Yi as he grew up and failed to be all that she seemed to be.

‘I’m… Sorry I didn’t contact you until now,’ she said, swallowing, voice strangely pitched. She was looking down. Hadn’t really looked at him much at all since they’d been taken to their table. He wondered if he looked to much like her now. Wondered if maybe he looked too much like his father; if she saw in him features that he would never have been able to recognise. ‘It was difficult for me to come and see you.’

‘It’s okay,’ Jian Yi said, automatically.

‘No, it’s not. I should have been able to put everything down and come straight here. I should have been able to see you within hours of your being back. I’m supposed to… I’m supposed to be your mother,’ she whispered, eyes raised this time, and they caught the light from the chandeliers and they were swimming. ‘I’m supposed to have rescued you. Supposed to not have been able to sleep or eat and I did it all fine. I was supposed to have kept you safe. And I failed. I failed you.’

‘Mum,’ Jian Yi said, quiet. He reached out for her hand, cold and shaking. He hadn’t seen her cry before. Didn’t know what to do. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does, Jian Yi. It does.’

‘It doesn’t. Because I don’t think it does. And if you’re… If you’ve been concerned about me then you’ll – you’ll respect how I felt in all of this. How much I want normalcy now.’

She seemed to fight with herself, looking at him and not at him at the same time, before eventually nodding. It wasn’t a nod that said okay. It was a nod that said there was nothing of that to discuss anymore, which was what most of their interaction had been like: speaking when there was a need, silence when there was nothing, really, that had to be said.

And what words from a child ever had to be said? When none of them, really, made sense, just some rambling triad of words that didn’t really say anything, it had meant that their conversations were short and when Jian Yi had found himself just talking about something that happened at school or how a cloud he saw looked like a sandwich, his mother would just give him a sort of quizzical look. Said she didn’t understand what he was saying and what was the point of what he was trying to say.

And she’d never figured that out, so she hadn’t said anything, and Jian Yi would fall quiet at the silence, wondering what, if anything, would get his mother just to talk to him like other people’s parents did. Like the teachers sometimes did. Like, eventually, Zhengxi would.

‘Feng let me know you were safe,’ she said, after a while, when the first course of soup that smelled of lemongrass and thinly sliced vegetables and meat had been brought out. ‘He wouldn’t tell me anything. Sometimes I didn’t hear for months. But that’s… It’s why I didn’t do much. It’s why I didn’t let your school or the police know. I knew that he’d keep you safe. And I shouldn’t have just used that as an excuse, I get that know.’

‘Did you speak with Dad?’

She looked up, sharp. ‘What?’

‘Did you contact him in prison? Did he know?’

Her mouth opened. Closed. ‘I never got to speak with him. They haven’t given me the rights to do that.’

It was a strange thing to sit across from your mother and know that they were lying to you.

And he wasn’t sure why he thought that – why he was so certain – but he was. Maybe it was the eyes that kept falling down, not because of the way his face looked, but because she had an issue with being unfaithful when she had to look someone straight in the eye. Maybe it was the fingers, long and pale and fine, like his, that kept a hold of the stem of her wine glass. They way the mouthfuls were larger each time, and she didn’t notice when the waiter brought out another bottle.

Maybe it was none of this. Maybe it was instinctive. Maybe, hopefully, he was wrong.

But some small part of him, something quiet and dark that had festered over the past few years, told him that he probably wasn’t.

‘What do you think of Feng?’

His mother frowned. ‘What do I think of him?’ she said. ‘I think he’s a murderous thug who does whatever your father tells him to.’

‘He kept me safe. Safer than I could have been.’

‘He shouldn’t have had to,’ she said sharply. ‘Shouldn’t have ever had to. You should never have gotten involved with it.’

Jian Yi shrugged. He leaned back as a waiter took the plates away, ignored the way his mother was looking at him, a sharp curiosity.

‘You’re not… They’re not still contacting you,’ she said. This was not a question.

And Jian Yi didn’t reply.

‘Ah-Yi—’

‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’

‘Jian Yi, you don’t know what you’re doing—’

‘Actually, I do,’ he said. Hard. ‘And, hey,’ he said, smile dry and not really even a smile. ‘Guess I’m growing up to be just like Dad.’

‘That’s not something to be proud of, Ah-Yi,’ she said. Her expression was macabre, horrified. Dark and full of everything she had seen; assuming, really, that Jian Yi had not seen those sorts of things too.

‘I didn’t ask you to be proud of me. In fact I didn’t ask you to be anything of me. Because you haven’t been there. Never, really, been there.’

She ignored this. ‘You can’t be telling me this, Ah-Jian. I’m not… You shouldn’t be giving me this information.’

‘Then I guess that’s your own trial, isn’t it? Duty or family. ‘Cause, like, we know which one you’ve chosen before.’

Her face fell, and he knew he was being cruel. Knew, really, that he shouldn’t have said it because she was his mother. But, then, the things that he was doing lately were things that the him of two years ago would never have done, and he had to acknowledge that he had changed. That his approach  wouldn’t be the same. Morals wouldn’t be the same. He didn’t quite… work the same anymore. Some wiring got cross-crossed; something got forgotten; something new reared its head. And he wondered what sort of thing it must have been for him to not even be that concerned.

‘That’s not fair, Jian,’ she said quietly. ‘Everything I have done has been for you. For your safety. And I would hate it if… You threw all of that away.’

‘I’m safe,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

She looked at him like that statement was so redundant. Not because not worrying about someone who was getting involved with organised crime was inevitable. But because she was his mother. And, of course, she would worry about him regardless. He wished, now, that he could believe in that sort of look.

‘Does Zhan Zhengxi know?’ she said. ‘Have you dragged him into all of this too?’

‘He knows. I had to tell him in the end.’

‘Jian…’

‘It’s fine. God.’

And she shook her head. ‘I forget how stupid you could be sometimes. He has a life ahead of him that you’re ruining.’

Jian Yi gritted his teeth. ‘Because you know me so well,’ he said. Didn’t comment on the fact that she acted like his life was already ruined. Like it didn’t really matter if his life ended up on the waste heap because he didn’t matter. Hadn’t grown up with the nuclear family, hadn’t gone to high school and university on the same path as everyone else. Already went wrong somewhere.

It did not escape his notice that he could, if he wanted to, blame that all on his parents. But that would be easier, and he was not that sort of person, so usually it was better and more typically masochistic of him to blame himself for it all. To blame himself for… other things, too. Because it would make sense, wouldn’t it? Fit in with that whole idea that instability as a child led to some sort of abnormality.

‘This isn’t how I wanted this to go,’ Jian Yi’s mother said softly. He didn’t ask if she meant their lunch date. Didn’t ask if she meant him.

‘Yeah, well, welcome to a glimpse at my life, Mum.’

Again, she just shook her head. He wondered how she’d imagined it: maybe he’d crack a few jokes, get that shocked laughter from her that said she’d forgotten he was funny, forgotten what funny was. Maybe they’d sit there through lunch and through dinner and until the restaurant started closing around them and they’d lose themselves in the conversation because it really had been two years, hadn’t it? Wrenched from each other with no amount of apology or grace.

Said enough about Jian Yi, though, that in that moment he’d been given to say goodbye, he’d chosen Zhengxi. Content just to look at him asleep on his bedroom floor and not even, properly, say goodbye.

Regardless, and needless to say, this did not happen. It was stiffness as the second course came out, no dessert, questions that his mother was asking him that really she should have known. How was school? Fine. Are you still friends with that tall boy? He Tian? Yeah.

Couldn’t really ask anything deeper than that; didn’t know enough about him to pick up an old conversation. To ask him what the game was like that he bought the other day. Ask him if he liked the recipe she sent him a couple of days ago (she didn’t, by the way; that was Zhengxi trying to encourage him to eat something that wasn’t takeaway and pre-packaged convenience store meals).

How awkward it was, to sit across from her, and know her, and not really know her.

He wondered why she’d ever had kids. Didn’t have that warm glow of motherhood. Sure, she had the protective instincts, but hers was a kind of hardness. A… selfishness. But then, she’d been so young, hadn’t she? And so, he supposed, had his father, too. Probably they were caught up in some teenage romance, and his father was probably a bad boy in a gang – maybe even Triad at that point already.

But then he couldn’t really imagine his mother falling for that kind of person. Not when she’d spent half her life running from him. It didn’t make sense, and, the thing was, he didn’t really know her enough to ask her those sorts of questions. Didn’t know if she’d give him an honest answer.

They left after another hour had passed, like they were waiting for something to break between them but knew it wouldn’t. His mother opened her mouth a couple of times, like she wanted to say something, and didn’t, and Jian Yi kind of hated that he’d sit there and wait and be expectant because he still wanted to hear her voice.

She paid the bill eventually, and the host brought her a coat that was fur-lined and expensive, and he realised that he hadn’t really asked her much about herself. Not that he hadn’t been interested; he’d just been sort of lost in the whole thing.

And he realised later, that night, curled up against Zhengxi because his shoulders were broader and he felt kind of soft and warm and he’d sigh in his sleep and mumble things that didn’t mean anything but Jian Yi liked to pretend was his name. And he lay there, and he realised that he still knew nothing. Still, she was this elusive woman that he could reach out to through a series of digits on his phone. A woman that maybe might do something like kill for him. But thought that that was what love and familial affection was.

He wondered, falling asleep, if he’d do that for her, and knew, really, that the only person he’d do it for was the one that he could feel beneath his palm, chest rising and falling, warm and asleep. Blissfully unaware.

Jian Yi wondered, before sleep finally took him, what he’d have to do to keep it that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150358943779/aphorism-xxvi-a-19-days-fanfic


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150401977694/aphorism-xxvii-a-19-days-fanfic

‘You’re being weird.’

‘What?’

‘You. You’re… nervous or something. Quieter than normal.’

‘I’m fine,’ Guan Shan said. He shrugged off the hand on his neck. Usually it would have felt warm and firm, kind of anchoring. But now it felt heavy and pressing and made him so _conscious._

‘You’re not getting sick?’

‘I said I’m _fine_ , He Tian.’

There was a beat of silence where his words echoed through the apartment, and then Guan Shan heard a sigh.

‘Something you want to tell me?’ He Tian said.

The quietness of it made him freeze; the… the _intent_ of it. Like he was asking something he knew the answer to. He swallowed.

Said: ‘What?’

Eventually he turned. He put the kitchen knife down, wiped his hands in the tea towel over his shoulder. He Tian was leaning against the counter, arms folded, veins in his forearms dark under the dim kitchen light, windows steamed up from the curry simmering over the stove. His expression was… Off. Disconcerting. Cautious. Not angry and forceful like it could have been, because he knew too well when Guan Shan wasn’t telling him everything. It was quiet. Weirdly domestic. Like he really cared. Like, if Guan Shan told him, there would be no judgment, like he’d just _help_ him. Listen to him. Hold his hand like they did in the movies and tell him they’d work through things _together_.

But He Tian wasn’t that different. And Guan Shan wasn’t that trusting. Wished he could be. Wish he could have just told him anything then.

‘There’s nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. Honest.’

He Tian stared. ‘Do you know what percentage of people say they’re fine when they’re not?’

‘There’s a statistic?’

‘I don’t have a fucking clue. But I bet it’s a fucking lot.’  

Guan Shan almost rolled his eyes, but He Tian wasn’t really joking to be funny. Still kept looking at him.

‘Honest,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. It’s just…’

‘It’s just?’

‘I saw—I saw a guy the other day. From high school.’

‘Okay.’

‘A guy from the gang I was in.’

He Tian shifted. ‘Right,’ he said.

Guan Shan caught the way his arms crossed, tighter this time, tendons stretched; the way his fists seemed to clench. Jaw shifted.

‘You saw him?’ He Tian said.

‘Talked to him. He… Offered me a place.’

‘And you said no.’

‘I said no.’

Something about him seemed to deflate, and Guan Shan didn’t feel hurt or accused that He Tian thought he might have said yes. Because, really, it was plausible. (Really, it had already happened a while back.) Because He Tian knew him more perhaps than he thought he did; knew that the allure still lay there a little – the safety of it. The assurance it brought with it. The blind, bullish confidence it carried along with the knives and the drugs and the guns. And to someone like Guan Shan, who’d never really had anything, that was a lot.

‘You’re—I—You’d tell me if anything happened, yeah?’

Guan Shan looked at the floor. Nodded. ‘Yeah. It won’t. I made myself clear.’

‘Because I can’t… Can’t protect you. I’d have to pass on any evidence I had if—’

‘I told you I’m not. We just talked.’

‘Guan Shan…’

Guan Shan let out an annoyed sound. ‘Seriously? You wanted to know what was wrong and I’ve told you and now you won’t believe me? My version of the truth isn’t good enough for you?’

‘I just don’t want you getting involved with this.’

‘Get over yourself, He Tian. You sit behind a _screen_ and watch people move about like ants and it makes you feel like a _god_. Okay? You don’t really _know anything_.’

The words, when he said them, were full of spite. But they were also true, and that’s probably why He Tian turned around, kept his back to him, pressed his hands in the counter until his shoulders slipped backwards and he gave off the distinct impression of a leopard ready, waiting.

‘You don’t, He Tian,’ Guan Shan said quietly. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know the… discomfort the whole thing has. And it’s all under this blanket of delusion and self-belief and some weird idealism and mob mindset and… It just fucks with you. You get fucked. Okay? It stays with you. It _never_ goes. It’s not… It’s not a computer screen. It’s not.’

‘It stays with you.’

There was a question in there somewhere.

Guan Shan swallowed. ‘You know—You know why they call me Red?’ he said.

‘Why.’

‘It’s because—it’s because when I first started I didn’t know how to use a knife,’ he said. Couldn’t quite believe he was saying this. Admitting it all. Hadn’t thought, ever, that he’d tell someone else. Hadn’t thought it wouldn’t be because he wanted to but because he needed to and because it was such a fucking _ruse_. ‘And—and we went out on cutting sprees. Ran into other gangs as soon as we saw them and just fucking _went_ for it. And the point of it was injury. That’s it. But I—I didn’t know how to inflict injury or what was fucking murder. I just—I used to slash, because I didn’t know where I was supposed to be fucking cutting. And I got so much _blood_ on me. Soaked my skin. Soaked my _hair_. The name was… It was… Fucking uncreative. But I remember coming home one day and looking in the mirror and it was so dark so my ma hadn’t seen and, like, I was just red. I was Red.’

‘Why are you telling me this, Guan Shan?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I needed you to know. How much shit it brought me. How much shit I got into because of it. How I’m still—still paying the consequences.’

‘Please don’t go back.’

‘What?’

Guan Shan stared at him; he still had his back to him. He noticed now, though, that his hands were shaking as they pressed into the counter. ‘Please don’t go back to them.’

‘I—’

‘Because I want to be able to say I could help you but I don’t know if I could.’

‘I know you could,’ he said. And he walked over, wrapped his hands around his waist until they could slide into the front pockets of He Tian’s jeans. And he put his chin on He Tian’s shoulder, breathed in the smell of him: mint and cigarettes. He said, ‘I know because you’re fucking terrifying with the shit you take on sometimes. I won’t because I don’t want you to have to. More than you do.’

‘And that’s it?’ He Tian muttered. ‘That’s all it was? Nothing more?’

‘Nothing more. I promise.’

They didn’t move for a while, and Guan Shan waited, stayed like that until the timer on the oven started beeping. Until He Tian was breathing normally and he could turn his head and kiss him from over his shoulder, slow and trembling and aching. The sound of it was soft, and the feel of it made Guan Shan hate himself even more than he did.

They ate dinner together, siting at He Tian’s dining table because He Tian liked that it felt like they were sharing a proper meal together, because he hadn’t admitted that his delusions were so fucking domestic. And the sounds of spoons scraping against the ceramic of the bowls filled the apartment.

‘So what are they doing?’

He Tian glanced at him over a glass of water he had raised to his lips. ‘Who?’

‘The gang you were looking at. What is it that they’re doing if you’re so… Concerned.’

He Tian swallowed. ‘Why d’you want to know?’

‘I’m curious. The guy… He said they were doing things differently now.’

‘My brother would kill me if he knew I said anything.’

And Guan Shan said, ‘I’m not—I’m not gonna tell anyone.’ Didn’t mention the fact that he’d told him and Jian Yi and Zhan enough already. ‘Who am I gonna tell?’  

He Tian leaned back, cleared his throat. ‘There’s… The warehouses. By the industrial estate. I think they’re using those as a sort of… I don’t know. Storage place. Meeting place. Their faces are usually hidden so it’s hard to see who it is but… Well they’re going there often enough that the facial recognition team will have pieced something together from the CCTV soon.’

‘You’ve got that kind of equipment?’ Guan Shan asked, not really interested in knowing the answer. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest, feel his phone burning a hole in the pocket.

‘Yeah. My brother… Made a lot of investments.’

‘Are the police going to send in a SWAT team or something?’

‘We’re not working with the police. Just MSS. It’s up to them what they want to do with the information, since we’re technically just data gatherers unless you use the main security branches we have and the legal department. I’m not law enforcement.’

‘So they might not even do anything.’

‘Might not,’ He Tian agreed. He stood up, headed over to the fridge and grabbed two beers and a bottle opener because apparently it was that kind of night. He handed one to Guan Shan, then opened his own and took a long, deep swallow as he sank back into the dining chair. He managed, somehow, lips wrapped around the bottleneck, a bead of liquid shivering on his lower lip as his throat worked, to look like sex in a chair that didn’t allow for anything but the straight-backed posture of a politician.

Guan Shan swallowed, took small mouthfuls of his own that always went well with the heat of the curry he made.

‘So is it… Just the warehouses you’ve been looking at? Are they working at other places too?’

He Tian shook his head. ‘Don’t feel like talking about this anymore,’ he said.

And Guan Shan had to nod and give a half-shrug like that was fine. Like he didn’t really need to know. Was just vaguely interested in a _how was work, dear?_ kind of way. But something in chest felt tight, and he was holding onto the bottle too tightly, too aware of the way he was holding himself. Not, really, knowing what else to say now.

‘How’s your mother?’ He Tian said, absently, like he wanted to know but wasn’t really _present_ at the moment. He was pushing around the few pieces of rice in his bowl with a knife.

‘She’s okay. She’s still on the antibiotics and they’re… Making her kind of drowsy. She sleeps a lot.’

This was true. Their conversations happened while Guan Shan sat on the edge of her bed and made sure the sheets covered her properly and that she was drinking and eating enough. He’d called the doctor a week ago, asked her if this was _normal_ that she should be so _out of it_ , because their conversations were garbled and she seemed to have no grasp of time. And Guan Shan was darkly pleased at that. Because it meant she didn’t fully notice when he slipped out at nights. When he got texts that meant he had to leave without questioning it. That he wasn’t having to _lie_ all the time.

And the doctor told him it wouldn’t be long, that the antibiotics should nearly have run their course by now and she shouldn’t need to take any medication other than her usual prescription.

And it was during this conversation that he had realised, like his ma’s temporary medication, that everything should really have an end point. And he wondered if that applied to Dai Lin. Wondered what he’d say when, finally, he paid off his ma’s bills. What he’d say when he’d outgrown any need to be a part of them anymore. But it had never really been a concern of his to wonder what Dai Lin was going to _say_. His concern, rather, lay in what he might _do_.

Because he _knew_ Guan Shan never really had any intention of staying longer than he needed. Like he was treating it like the night shift at a fuel station, temporary and impermanent and not filled with any investment of future planning. But Dai Lin liked to pretend that he hadn’t been made aware of certain things. Liked to make people feel like they _kept_ things from him. Like, implicitly, they were betraying him somehow and should try harder next time. And, usually, this was true, but, often, it was not. So when Guan Shan would hand in the knives and the gun he’d been given (kept it in the box of things that his dad had given him, the box with the unopened headphones from He Tian), Dai Lin would look at him and sort of laugh and say, ‘What, you thought it would be that _easy_?’

And Guan Shan hoped that the strong part of him would say yes and have the courage to walk out and not look back. But the weaker part of him wondered if he’d put up a fight when Dai Lin, in fact, didn’t let him just _walk out_.

As Dai Lin liked to remind him more and more lately: this was getting bigger. The contacts were more important, the cash being handled was bulkier and done via transfers and nothing too physical that let them get their hands dirty more than it needed to. It was like He Tian had said: it was getting fucking _bureaucratic_. And this all meant that ‘walking out’ now was really easier said than done.

He Tian nodded. ‘And have you… Given any more thought? To staying here? Moving in?’

‘I have,’ Guan Shan said slowly.

‘And what did you think?’

Guan Shan rubbed his forehead with a hand, cold and damp from the condensation. ‘I want to,’ he said. ‘My ma seemed to be okay with it before… before her accident happened. But I just – I need her to be well before we do anything that big.’

 _I just need,_ he thought, _to not be running out at night so that I can make sure a deal goes down okay. I just need to not give you more of a reason to think that something’s not right._

He Tian was pressing his lips tight together, eyes kind of bright, like he was hiding a smile and failing.

‘How long do you think that will take?’ He Tian said.

‘Couple weeks? Maybe months?’ His ma would be fine by then, and he should have paid everything off by then. Should have. Nothing, really, was very certain about it.

‘You’ll be here for Christmas?’

‘I… Yeah. Maybe.’

He Tian let out a whoosh of air, nodding. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That sounds… good.’

‘We need to talk about that, though. Because – because I can’t just freeload off you, He Tian. It’s not right. I can’t be, like, _kept_ and shit.’

‘I’ve told you before. It’s not freeloading when _I’m_ here for free anyway.’

‘But—’

‘But nothing,’ He Tian cut in. ‘If it makes you feel better we’ll split grocery costs. That’ll be it.’

‘Like we need to split it. I buy and cook everything for you anyway.’

‘Yeah and I pay you. And you don’t cook _everything_.’

Guan Shan gave him a look. ‘You have Tupperware containers with the days of the week on them, He Tian.’

‘Great,’ He Tian muttered. ‘Thanks for making me sound like a fucking NEET or something.’

This made Guan Shan laugh. The image of it. He Tian in clothes that were old and kind of dirty, bumming about Ning doing nothing but smoking cigarettes that probably wouldn’t be the expensive menthol ones he bought. It didn’t quite fit.

He Tian was watching, a small smile lingering on the edges of his lips. He liked watching Guan Shan laugh, liked listening to it, and it made him so conscious when he did it. But weirdly… appreciated. Like he was some sort of statue or painting that He Tian was drinking in one part at a time.          

‘Are you staying tonight?’

‘Can’t.’

‘Work?’

‘No. My ma.’

‘You haven’t stayed in ages.’

‘I know,’ said Guan Shan, swallowing. ‘It’s just… Things are a bit…’

‘You don’t need to, like, excuse yourself,’ He Tian told him. ‘I don’t want that.’ He stood, started gathering together the dishes. ‘I just miss you, I guess.’

Guan Shan wasn’t able to put a name on the thing he was feeling. Perhaps because he caught a glimpse of He Tian’s face and it was _confused_ and he clearly didn’t _get it_. Maybe it was because Guan Shan wanted to tell him that he missed him too, because he did. A lot. Maybe it was because, despite all of this, the reason they weren’t together as often as they wanted was because of him. Because he was slipping out at night to be Dai Lin’s backup when he was doing a trade. Because he was waiting to see when the local police officer changed their rotation so they wouldn’t get caught. Because he was checking that some kids were weighing out the right amount of coke into bags and checking that it all got stored and distributed correctly. And now, even when they were together, Guan Shan was listening to He Tian’s words, not because he wanted to hear that timbre of his voice that used to make him shiver – still did sometimes when he didn’t have to think about everything too much – but so that he could remember what they were and pass them on to Dai Lin.

What he _was_ feeling was a unique mixture of love and lust and the bitter aftertaste of betrayal, and it was so vile on his tongue.

 

* * *

 

The phone didn’t ring for long when Guan Shan called, walking up the staircase to his floor. The lights in the stairwell were broken and flickering and made the buzzing sound of live wires. It smelled off piss and acid and there were empty condom wrappers and needles and McDonald’s packaging thrown onto the stairs.

He’d gotten used to it by now – gotten used to the smell. Felt like as soon as he climbed out of He Tian’s car – let him kiss him with a kind of pained reluctance that made him squeeze his eyes shut and leave because they couldn’t say anything more; knew He Tian would be watching him not just because he hoped he got in safe but because he was wondering what the fuck was going on – and felt like he was becoming a part of it again.

It was difficult to differentiate himself from the crap that people had thrown out from, well, from himself.

‘It’s late, Red,’ a voice said, tinny through the speaker. He was using an old phone that someone had been selling on eBay. The screen was smashed and half the keys didn’t work, but it was good enough for what he needed.

‘You need to stop using the warehouses.’

A beat of silence. ‘Why?’

Guan Shan paused, waited until a group of guys passed him on the stairs, large and looming and casting him glances that made him feel tense.

‘The warehouses are being monitored. They know we’re using them.’

He heard Dai Lin swear, low and quiet. ‘ _Fuck_ ,’ he said again, and Guan Shan imagined him running a hand through his hair, standing in his kitchen and pouring himself a couple of fingers of burning liquor. ‘Okay. And you’re sure?’

‘I’m sure. It’s only a matter of time before they identify the members moving around them. And more time before they actually raid it.’

‘Fucking hell. Where are we supposed to put it all? I’m not fucking leaving it in my _house_.’

‘I don’t know. Rent a fucking storage unit in the city or something.’

Dai Lin scoffed. ‘ _Great idea_ , Red. Great idea.’

‘I didn’t volunteer to give you fucking solutions to this, Dai Lin. I said I’d pass on information. I didn’t say I’d do anything more than that.’

‘I know. I know. And… You did good.’

What was Guan Shan supposed to say to that? _Thank you_? Thank you for praising him for using his boyfriend as a fucking pawn in all of this? Thank you for driving him to the point where he realised that any relationship he got to have couldn’t last because he’d fuck it up? Thank you for making him realise what a piece of shit he was for volunteering to do it in the first place?

In the end he said nothing except, ‘You said a thousand Yuan for any information. I’m getting it tomorrow.’

‘Five hundred.’

‘Dai Lin—’

‘You said you’d be a blade.’

Guan Shan swallowed. Wanted to cry. Scream. Guan Shan felt the knife in his pocket that he kept just in case, and, like watching a camera pan out, he felt a small part of him, quietly, fading, switch off. 

He said, ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘There’s a group in Lukouzhen that have been moving into our territory.’

‘You said this wasn’t turf war anymore.’

‘It will always be turf war until we have Nanjing.’

‘You can’t _dominate_ a city, Dai Lin.’

‘Yeah, you can. Become a branch of the Triad and you can do anything.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150401977694/aphorism-xxvii-a-19-days-fanfic


	28. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150444499894/aphorism-interlude-a-19-days-fanfic

Nanjing became something else at night.

It became something abstract, became something different. Like it had shed it’s skin, like things had crept out the sun-stark shadows of the day, and lights were on in the skyscrapers and the building blocks and everyone who didn’t have their curtains drawn was on display, this hot flush of civilisation that seeped through the city in the day, and at night pressed against the windows because it was the only other way they could be on show.

In that city there were many people and many things, and some were kind but most were not, and something about that darkness of night drew out the unkind things that made hair on the back of necks rise, keys tighten in clenched fists, made shadows slip into the neon glow of light that was not like the sun.

In that city there were boys with hearts broken and healing who had been told that they shouldn’t be so soft, and they wondered if it was possible to be in love with one person only in their whole life.

In that city there were grandmothers pushing babies around empty parks while they wailed because their mothers hadn’t slept in three days. And girls sang, plucked hopefully at guitar strings through their open windows and had only the applause of car horns and heavy drunken laughter to fill the blank silence of the streets below.

And, elsewhere, people were born and people died in the transient, luminal place that smelled of disinfectant and lukewarm food and sickness. And one one noticed one slipping out while the other slipped in.

And kids wandered through cities because they didn’t speak the language and everyone seemed to be _with_ someone except themselves and they were hungry but they didn’t know the word for sandwich; tired but they didn’t know the word for bed.

And there were the people who met the glances of other people at road crossings and through the mirrors of dingy public bathrooms, both vaguely embarrassed, both sure they had looked away first, both wondering what the other was doing there at that time of night.

There were people in cars that drove fast with engines that shook the buildings they shot between, just because they could, and there were people in cars that drove slow and rolled the windows down and stared at the bare flesh on offer to them that they could own for a few hours.

There were the people that were hurting other people, and there were people that were fucking other people – and weren’t they the same thing really? – and there were people who weren’t doing anything but staring at the ceiling because they were high or sad or both, and there were people who were sleeping and smiling because the city and everything in it had been kind to them that day.

And elsewhere, things that shouldn’t have been were loaded onto ships and stacked onto planes, and men and women stood in airport arrivals or on the docks and let themselves smile, because business was good, and he had been just like his father.

And a man with his arm filled with black played with the knives in his bedside table and thought about the man he might have to become soon, and the sort of man he’d have to make other people become soon too.

And the boy he thought of changing screamed into his pillow when got back to a home he hated at 4 AM and had done things he hadn’t wanted to, and his mother didn’t hear him because she was asleep and hadn’t been able to ask if her son was okay for some time and fully listen and understand the answer. Because sometimes he said, ‘No,’ just to see, and her replies were always the same.

And across the city someone else watched that boy on street cameras that he shouldn’t have been watching, sat in his suit and smoked a cigarette and wondered if this was a truth he should be keeping. And his phone was the only thing that lit up the room and it made the woman in his bed look pale in the glow and he’d thought about her for a while and shouldn’t have because she was a client and it hadn’t been as good as he’d expected. Wasn’t sure, really, what he was expecting.

And, not so far, someone else lay in their bed in a too-big apartment, hopeless and helpless and alone, and thought that the red-haired boy, the walls cramped and the air bitter in the winter, slipping through the gap between the window frame and settling over his uncovered skin, probably felt that more.

Another boy got to wonder that night how many days he had left and how long he’d get to be there. Because he’d bought all the furniture but would never really need it soon. Thought about the things he’d been promising to people he didn’t trust. Thought about the threats that were being whispered in his ear and the looks that were being pinned into his back.

Thought about another boy who lay sleeping beside him, always sleeping when he was awake, and wondered if they were still ships in the night because what they wanted and needed had yet to collide. Didn’t realise, of course, that sometimes the boy was awake and his breath was just shallow and he’d be wondering why _he_ was awake, wondering what was lingering in his mind. Wondering if what he wanted and what he needed was the same. Wondering what he’d do if he realised it wasn’t because so far the feel of skin and the brush of lips had been enough and he hadn’t looked for more.

And they all thought they were keeping secrets and didn’t realise the others were keeping secrets of their own. And they were all wondering without asking. All thinking without saying anything. And the night seemed to cultivate that. Bought out a depth to the things that people didn’t want to acknowledge in the day. Festered in the darkness and the shadows that could twist into nightmares.

And no one really slept because there never seemed to be time for that anymore, and when they did it was with the echo of silence, or the echo of breathing, or the sound of laughter and roaring engines that sounded like shouting and crying, and the sound of a city dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150444499894/aphorism-interlude-a-19-days-fanfic


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150454268664/aphorism-xxviii-a-19-days-fanfic

Guan Shan found it ironic that the more Dai Lin pressed on him, the more he wanted to be with He Tian. It seemed rather counter productive, because it seemed only that he was forcing himself into a position where Dai Lin could use him. Sent him texts daily to ask what was new, because he knew, now, that Guan Shan was _reliable_. That he performed. That, for once, he brought exactly what he said.

Guan Shan wondered if he should have kept his mouth shut. Wondered if he should have let He Tian find everything out. Wondered, really, if he should have just let himself get caught. Let He Tian see what kind of person he was really like. Let him see what kind of person he was dating. Who he was kissing. Touching. Phoning at lunchtimes and dinner times and the minutes before he went to sleep. Minutes when he stepped out into the cold November air on the balcony, outside Dai Lin’s house, outside restaurants and apartments that he thought were worse than his own. Minutes that sometimes could make him laugh, make him want, would end up making him cry and loathe.  

But he still rang the buzzer to He Tian’s apartment. Still cooked them food and didn’t let He Tian touch because he was a fucking nightmare in the kitchen: broke things, burnt things, spilled things. Because the closest thing he could get to forgetting everything was, incidentally, with him.

‘I called you last night.’

‘Yeah, I was working.’

‘Right,’ He Tian said. He stacked the dishes in the dishwasher, added a tablet and pressed the start button. He turned to him. ‘Can we, like, stop doing this? Whatever this is?’

Guan Shan ran his hands through his hair. ‘What, He Tian? Stop what?’

‘You’re being fucking _weird_ with me. You barely said one word through dinner.’ He shook his head. ‘Is it me? Am I… _pushing_ you?’

Guan Shan stared, felt sick and awful that he would think this was _him._ ‘What? No. _No._ ’

‘Is it the gang thing? Are they—Are they still contacting you?’

He let out an irritated sound. Not irritated with He Tian. With himself. With – with everything. Because why, for once, didn’t he get to control something? Why didn’t he get to tell the truth when he needed to? When he wanted to?

‘It’s not that. It’s just my ma. And work.’

He Tian frowned. ‘Work?’

Guan Shan swallowed. ‘My boss… He wants to get a merger with a big company or something. Wants to become a branch.’

‘And he’s causing trouble for you?’

‘He’s not sure if he’ll keep me on if they merge. They’ll use their own staff, maybe.’

‘You know you’ve always got a job if you need one,’ He Tian said quietly. ‘Even just for a while. You know that.’

‘And you know I’ve got a fucking big chip on my shoulder.’

He Tian snorted, rolled his eyes. ‘It’ll be okay,’ he said. He dried his hands in a towel, walked over to him, slipped his hands beneath the back of Guan Shan’s shirt. They were warm, and his skin was cold, and he shivered to look up at him.

The lighting in the kitchen was dark, made He Tian’s eyes look like they were made of pitch and the space between stars. Made Guan Shan feel like if he looked long enough into them he might forget a part of himself.

So he blinked, because there was a danger there.  

He Tian leaned down, lips at his ear. ‘Let me fuck you,’ he whispered. The feel of it made him shiver; the breath, the vibration.

‘He Tian…’

‘Come on,’ he said, and then he drew back, put a hand on his face so his thumbs rested across his cheekbones, brushed against his skin, across his lips. The other worked its fingers into his back, the base of his spine. ‘You’re so fucking tense.’

Guan Shan felt his head roll forward. ‘He Tian, I…’

‘Let me fuck you. Let me fuck you or we can watch a movie and I’ll give you a blowjob and we’ll go to bed. Your choice. But you’re not just leaving. You need this.’

Guan Shan swallowed. Because he actually had to choose. Because sometimes the latter – the movie, He Tian’s lips wrapped around his cock – was usually perfect because it was new and it wasn’t really even about them – it was about some sort of moment they’d created. It was natural in a way that they’d never had and had only started doing recently. Hands tugging lazily, fingers searching and brushing against flushed skin, He Tian’s mouth hot around him and he’d only be half-watching the movie, toes curling into the floorboards.

And that was always quiet. And He Tian would swallow because he was weird and said he liked the taste, and he wouldn’t even wash his mouth out before he drew Guan Shan into a kiss that was hot and salty and tasted of himself and they’d just turn back to the movie and maybe fall asleep before the credits rolled.

But when He Tian fucked him… It wasn’t sex. It wasn’t making love like they’d done… Once? Twice before? Rare moments that they hadn’t really realised had been what it was until after it had happened because that was just because of a particular mood then.

When He Tian fucked him it wasn’t harsh and brutal and painful. Except that it was because it was torturous and always about He Tian except for the ‘down’ moments that He Tian made all about Guan Shan – kissing the slope of his neck, whispering small things about how happy he was and how much he wanted to be with him, tiny insecurities that made _Guan Shan_ feel more secure but now would make him want to cry.

And he tried to consider it. Tried to think about what he really wanted. Wondered if, soon, he’d get either chance again.

But he asked him to fuck him, because he knew really that’s all that he wanted, not to forget but just to lose himself for a little while, because He Tian knew how to make him do that. Make him lose his goddamn mind.

And He Tian nodded, led him into the bedroom with a hand locked through his. Took his clothes off like he was going for a doctor’s examination, pushed Guan Shan onto the bed when he’d taken his off too.

For a moment he just straddled him, knees either side of his waist, let his cock rub against Guan Shan’s until the breath shuddered out of them both, kissed his neck until it would be bruised and the blood welled to the surface under his skin and left marks that fit his mouth. And then he grabbed the lube from the side drawer of his bedside, jacked Guan Shan off with motions that were almost perfunctory, something almost clinical and precise about it. Did it until Guan Shan’s hips were bucking but couldn’t because He Tian’s weight was on him, pressing him down.

And he let go before he got to come, just brought him to the edge until Guan Shan’s eyebrows furrowed with slight irritation. He climbed off the bed and looked down at him, at his cock hard and red and pressed against his stomach, leaking and slick with lube. And Guan Shan wanted to close his legs, hide some part of himself, because the way He Tian looked at him was fucking _animalistic_ , laid out on his sheets and already stinking of sweat and sex and they hadn’t even started. Body straining and wanting and waiting, He Tian knowing that he was going to give it to him. Make him feel it for days.

He looked at him the way, Guan Shan realised, he used to look at him when they were in school. Like all that time this had been what he’d imagined, and that ghost of a smile, that smug hint of satisfaction on his face, said now that it was what he’d always imagined, like he’d created a masterpiece in his head and made it happen in reality.

‘He Tian,’ Guan Shan muttered, head turning into the pillow. Because there was only so much of this looking that he could withstand, like he was on show, on display.

And He Tian grabbed the lube again, turned Guan Shan onto his stomach, legs wide, kneeled between his thighs, his fingers cold and wet and his entrance, worked him open until he was gasping and writhing and—

‘ _Please_ , He Tian. _Inside._ ’

‘Hm?’ He Tian asked, leaning over so his chest was flush on his back, lips at his ear. He curved his fingers – three of them now – until Guan Shan jerked upwards, nearly smashed his head into He Tian’s face, and He Tian let out a dark laugh that _crawled_ over his skin. ‘What was that?’

‘ _Fuck me_ ,’ Guan Shan growled.

‘Rude,’ came He Tian’s reply, but he threw the lube onto the floor, turned Guan Shan again onto his back so he could look at him.

He parted Guan Shan’s legs, just _looked_ at him. For a while.

‘Look at you,’ he murmured, hands warm on the inside of his thighs. ‘Beautiful.’

And he looked at him _there_ , leaned in and spat on him and Guan Shan said it was disgusting but still felt some dark thrill at the coldness, the wetness being pushed inside because He Tian was pressing in now and Guan Shan had that awful moment of not being able to breathe, lungs seizing because his mind was scrabbling for something and saying _too much too much_.

And He Tian told him just to _breathe, Guan Shan_ , sinking in and not stopping until he was fucking _buried_ in him, Guan Shan’s knees bent either side of him, feet pressing into the sheets and toes curling because god it was like this every time. Every time like it was the first. And He Tian wore an expression that said he fucking _loved_ it. Loved seeing Guan Shan just _lose_ it for a second – for an hour, more – loved seeing his mind go static for a bit as he started moving, let his hips rock, see something in him just disappear for a while, something slip behind his eyes and go away while He Tian worked him over and let something else take its place. Let something else take his place until he couldn’t fucking _think_ anymore.

When he started it was slow, always slow, like he was building pace and working up to it. Getting him to stretch around him, liked how tight he was, how he got so _loose_ for him as he worked into him. Felt every time he clenched around him when he hit that part of him, felt the way Guan Shan trembled when He Tian let his fingers ghost over the line of his cock, over his abdomen, his nipples, put his tongue behind his ear and on his waist and the shadow of his hipbones and his collarbones like he was trying to work out his anatomy with his mouth.

And he’d _say_ things that Guan Shan used to roll his eyes at when he watched porn but in He Tian’s voice, words whispered into his ear, they were fucking _ruining_. And then sometimes he’d say other things that Guan Shan thought, alone, could make him come because god where did he come up with it because it was fucking _filthy_.

Like when he told him that he wanted to fuck him until he didn’t know anything but the feel of his cock, wouldn’t fit to the shape of anyone but him, wouldn’t ever _want_ anyone but him and he’d tell him this until Guan Shan started to believe it and every time he’d push into him and hit the back of him he thought it was true. Like when he told him that he was gonna stay in him all night just so he could feel how Guan Shan tried to go tight around him when he slept. Told him he was gonna use his mouth one day until Guan Shan was nothing but something to keep him warm, throat gagging for the feel of him, knees ruined from carpet burn. Told him he was gonna fuck him on the train, rocking into him so quietly and everyone would be watching and he’d have to try not to make a sound, heels off the floor, palms pressed against the glass of the door, _keep quiet or they’ll hear you, you gotta stay quiet, baby_. And he’d like that, wouldn’t he? Yeah? Everyone watching him. Seeing how fucking _dirty_ he was. Taking it while they watched. Got off on the fact that they would _see_ when he came, let his come hit the window of the glass doors and smear when they opened, let He Tian put his fingers in his mouth so he could _taste_ himself.

Told him he’d put him in half in his car and the windows were blacked out so no one would see how he let his legs just _part_ for him, parked up on the side of the street and _moaned_ as people walked past, let He Tian’s come leak from him. And He Tian would button up his jeans and push him out the car on shaking legs, would have to grip the roof for a second because he wasn’t sure he could stand and everyone would see that his jeans had a wet patch on them and he’d still be hard, have to walk around the city without coming and knowing that people could _see_ and you wouldn’t be allowed to touch yourself. You’d sit in the park and wait and be good for me, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?

‘Yes,’ Guan Shan would moan. ‘I’d be good, He Tian. I’d be good for you.’

‘You’d be good, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, He Tian. I’d be _so good_. _Please_. I’d be good.’

And He Tian would nod, saying all this as he rocked into him, so slow, so quiet, no sound but for the whisper of his words and Guan Shan’s breath hitching in his throat and the quiet press of skin against skin.

And the slowness never lasted long, because Guan Shan had an arm flung over his eyes, face pressed into the crook of his elbow, because he couldn’t _look at him like that anymore_ , another over his mouth because Christ the _sound of him_ – and He Tian would move them so his arms were pinned above his head and his fingers were locked into his, hands bruising as He Tian put his weight into them, lifted himself up so he wasn’t even touching him. Couldn’t feel _anything_ of him but the heat of his body that hovered over him, muscles shaking to hold himself, his cock sliding into him, hitting some part of him that made his feet strain, legs scrabbling against the sheet, jaw open wide in a silent scream with his throat closed up and his eyes rolled back.

But suddenly He Tian would change, flip Guan Shan onto his stomach and lie on top of him so he couldn’t fucking move – couldn’t _breathe_ – legs either side of his and keeping them pressed together, trapped, and it was all he could do not to _scream_ as what had been slow, torturous rocking became _pounding_ and the smack of flesh and Guan Shan crying hoarse into the pillow because he couldn’t fucking lift his head and He Tian’s mouth was at his ear and he was saying, ‘Yeah. That’s it, baby. Fucking _take_ it,’ and Guan Shan would be sure he’d never been fucked like that before. And the bed would be hitting the wall so hard and the _sounds_ he was making – He Tian told him that everyone in the block must be able to hear him. They’d be touching themselves with _every. Single_. _Moan_.

And it would go on like that. For the whole night. And sometimes He Tian would lift him up onto his knees, hand wrapped around his cock that could barely build up a friction against the sheets when He Tian was on top of him, other hand on his chest because Guan Shan couldn’t keep himself up, didn’t have that kind of strength anymore, and his head would hang because he couldn’t lift it unless He Tian reached over and parted his lips with his tongue and kissed him as he fucked him.

And sometimes he’d stop and they’d lie on their sides, and He Tian would still be in him and Guan Shan knew he’d feel so fucking empty when he pulled out, and he thought that maybe he fell asleep a couple of times, because He Tian was barely rocking – barely moving sometimes, just breathing in his ear, kissing his shoulder, between his shoulder blades, licking the sweat from the back of his neck, hand pulling lazily at his cock.

And after a while, it would get too much, and He Tian would put him on his back again and he’d push his legs back, the hook of his knees on He Tian’s shoulders and he’d practically bend him in fucking _half_. And it would be some curious mix of something that was almost like making love and something that was so far from it.

And – god – fuck – it felt like hours – had been hours, hadn’t it? And He Tian would just keep going and wouldn’t _stop_ and Guan Shan would be begging for him to come. Didn’t even care if, at this point, he didn’t get to because he was burning and his skin felt like it was on _fire_ and he _ached_ and every slight shift made something like lightning course through him and made him cry out and his voice was so hoarse and he was too _sensitive_ and He Tian fucking _smiled_ through it all, slick with sweat and muscles flushed and he kept – he kept _going._

‘ _No more_ ,’ Guan Shan cried eventually, a strangled thing that was mostly a sob. ‘ _No more_.’

He’d put his hands on He Tian’s chest and they’d slide off because he was covered in sweat and because he couldn’t even _push_ , and when he could He Tian would just take them and press them into the sheets at his sides and he’d just have to _lie_ there and let him fuck him.

‘Come on, baby,’ He Tian said. Only called him baby when it was like that. When he was sure they wouldn’t really remember it because it was all one haze of being too much. ‘Just a little more. Come on.’

And Guan Shan shook his head, and everything was shaking and feverish and he said, ‘I can’t. He Tian, I _can’t_. _Please_.’

‘Yeah, you can,’ He Tian said, groaned it into his skin.

‘ _Please_ , He Tian. I’m – I – _please just_ —’

‘Shhh,’ he whispered, voice like night and sin. ‘You can take it. For me, baby. Just a little more. For me.’

He marked this with a thrust, sharp movement of his hips, a squeeze at the base of Guan Shan’s cock that made him choke.

And Guan Shan was crying, said, ‘ _He Tian_ ,’ but he knew that it was a yes. And He Tian’s look was dark and terrifying because he heard the yes, too.

So he kept going, with a slowness that wasn’t really even careful. Catching on the rim of him every time he pulled out, just to feel the sensation of going back in like it was the first time, feeling Guan Shan take him – all of him, filling him up and leaning in so that Guan Shan’s hands scrabbled on the sheets and he made a choked sound because it was too much _too much too much._ And He Tian would push in, keep pushing like there was somewhere to _go_ and there _wasn’t_ and Guan Shan’s head would be shaking back and forth, hair messed against the sheets, lips making sounds that were wordless and senseless and his eyes were rolling back.

And god it took forever. And Guan Shan was a mess by the time it happened, finally, shaking and trembling and everything ached, and He Tian made it happen fast, short and pointed like he knew where to light him up and he wrapped a hand around Guan Shan’s cock and eventually all he could do was _scream_ as lightning ran through every nerve-ending, felt something wet seep in him, leaking, trying to get out; felt He Tian shuddering inside him, felt his shaky breath against his neck as he collapsed on top of him, stayed in him, told him how he was gonna fill him up, how perfect he’d been, let Guan Shan’s legs fall from his shoulders and go loose and still against the sheets and Guan Shan just—

Went out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150454268664/aphorism-xxviii-a-19-days-fanfic


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150538653244/aphorism-xxix

**20 Hours Before**

He Tian sighed. Ran a hand through his hair. The screen in front of him was blank. There were the warehouses, a shivering grey on the old CCTV. Blank because, where they had been crawling with figures the week before, now they were empty. Silent. Nothing but cars passing – people who had taken a wrong turn to get into the city, number plates already checked.

He wondered what had happened. Maybe a deal had already happened. Maybe they sold all their stock. Maybe they’d finished collecting like animals getting ready for hibernation. But when his brother sent out their raid squad, there was nothing there. Just a warehouse that smelled of damp and stale and bird shit. Nothing, even, to suggest they had been there. No scuffs in the graveled floor, no tire marks from their cars that had covered plates.

And the thing was, it wasn’t unlikely. That, after a while, they’d move to avoid suspicion. Should have given them more credit, because they weren’t, apparently, that stupid.

His brother had given him that kind of filial pat on the shoulder, said, ‘Don’t worry. Sometimes these things happen.’ And beyond that kind of pleasant, old boy confidence, He Tian caught the dip in his voice, the small frown that said, really, these things didn’t happen all that often, and that He Tian was _right_ to be annoyed. To be put out. To be really fucking suspicious about the neatness of it all.  

And he was staring at the screen, still, trying to figure out what next because really it had been Jan Xiu that told him to really look into the warehouses. And he had to spend a while thinking if really he knew anything now.

‘You know, I still can’t get over seeing you in glasses.’ 

He turned around, unsurprised to see Jan Xiu standing there with that smile on his face that He Tian had come to accept as him, had started to overlook. Shirt unbuttoned one button too far, hair wet with gel. He Tian would have thought him a bit of a creep had he not been, really, quite grateful for his help. And it was why he had to listen to him now. Had to give him the attention he wanted. Didn’t take his glasses off because Jan Xiu clearly had some sort of fantasies playing out in his head that he’d have to exploit.

‘Jan Xiu,’ He Tian said, and the man’s smile grew wider.

‘How’s it going?’

‘How do you think?’

‘Mm, I heard. Disappointing turn of events by all accounts.’

‘Disappointing,’ He Tian agreed.

Jan Xiu tilted his head towards the screen. ‘Hate to tell you, but I don’t think watching this is going to help you anymore.’

He Tian sighed. He wondered why Jan Xiu was helping him. Wondered why he was taking time from his own work – what was he even working _on_? – and if He Tian was expected to give him something back. Reciprocate in the way Jan Xiu clearly wanted. The thought of it made his throat close up a little, but the man seemed to be a flirt: harmless and amusing and sly.

Not that kind of cloying darkness that smelled of sweat and too much aftershave and carried with it red lights and sticky lips and blacked-out car windows.

‘What do you think then, Jan Xiu?’

‘The mighty He family asking little old me for help?’

‘Little?’ He Tian said, heavy and pointed, and Jan Xiu seemed to like that, because his eyes widened in delighted surprise, and he let out a laugh, took the opportunity to put a hand on He Tian’s shoulder and squeeze – not hard, just with a kind of genial appreciation that said not many people tended to indulge his personality. His interests. The kind of person he was that most would overlook for the sake of professionalism and general discomfort.

How hard it was, He Tian thought, being a gay man in China.

And the thing was, Jan Xiu was not unattractive. Not at all. And his smile might have been endearing to someone that wasn’t He Tian and used to Guan Shan’s hardness and the way he had to unfurl like a flower, slow and cautious. And had he been a woman He Tian expected most men in the office would have rather enjoyed his attention. But he wasn’t. So they didn’t.

‘I heard you’re dating,’ Jan Xiu said.

For a moment He Tian didn’t know what to say, briefly side-tracked. ‘Sorry?’

‘Mo Guan Shan?’ he said. ‘If I remember correctly.’

‘What?’

‘I hope you don’t mind. Curiosity got the better of me. Something about cats springs to mind?’

He Tian swallowed. ‘You didn’t… Really have any right to do that.’

Jan Xiu sighed. ‘I know,’ he said. The small, curved cubicle next to He Tian’s was empty, so he rolled the chair over and sank into with another heavy sigh. He Tian was aware of the quietness along the office floor, a perpetual thing that was only interrupted by the sound of the coffee machine and mouse clicks, the tap of keyboards and murmured conversations. So Jan Xiu was quiet when he said, ‘Have to look after my boss’ younger brother though, don’t I?’

‘I’m sure my brother has done his own checks already.’

‘Oh, undoubtedly,’ Jan Xiu said. ‘Undoubtedly.’ He scratched his jaw. ‘He was in a gang, you know?’

‘I know.’

‘Really? Because I was wondering how well you could really _know_ someone like that.’

He Tian stared. ‘Are you fucking with me because I’m dating a guy? Are you—Is this your weird attempt at driving a wedge between me and him? Are you _jealous_? Is that what this is? Your way of imagining that the two of us could be _together_ if you got rid of him?’

And Jan Xiu laughed. Kind of dry and not the full kind of thing that it was usually. It said that He Tian was being a dick, which he was, but there was a slight pause in it that said maybe He Tian’s particular brand of cruelty wasn’t so far off the mark.

Jan Xiu said, ‘Get over yourself. I’m not that fucking desperate. I’m doing my job. I was hoping to see that you’d do yours.’

‘Well if you know something then just fucking say it. I don’t have time for your weird back and forth, and I don’t enjoy it. At all.’

Jan Xiu gave him a look. ‘Don’t be like that, He Tian. It just struck me as… Interesting.’

He Tian clenched his jaw. ‘Well perhaps you should start focussing on your own work before you start on other people’s. Before you start intruding on people’s personal lives that, really, have nothing to do with you.’

‘On the contrary. Have you looked at his file?’

‘I don’t know how you treat the people you date, but I have some decency.’

‘It’s no different to looking up someone’s Weixin or Weibo.’

‘I think having access to someone’s phone records and physical whereabouts and criminal records is a _bit_ different.’

He Tian picked up the mug on his desk, drank the rest of the coffee that was cold and bitter and slid down his throat with the same feeling that this conversation had. It wouldn’t really be very appropriate to hook someone across the jaw with his fist in the workplace, would it?

‘I think what you’d find there would be very interesting.’

He Tian laughed, let his eyes lift to the ceiling as he shook his head in disbelief. ‘I think you should probably stop talking now, Jan Xiu.’

‘Sure,’ he said, shrugging. ‘But, you know, I’m only looking out for you.’

‘If that’s what you’re calling this then I’d like you to stop. Now.’

Jan Xiu shrugged again. Like this whole thing didn’t really mean anything to him. Like he wasn’t suggesting that Guan Shan… Like he wasn’t suggesting what he was fucking _suggesting._ Like He Tian was the kind of person that would listen and nod kind of sagely and take his advice that was not advice. Not really. It was… A guiding hand towards betrayal. As if after everything He Tian would take that hand and let him lead him and Guan Shan to some inevitable ruin.

Because he’d always thought that, if things ended, it would be because of him. And he hated that. Fucking hated that he knew himself so well to accept that it was not a possibility but an inevitability. Just another part of fate.

And all it did was make He Tian damned sure he’d never drive them to it if he could help it. And he could help it.

Couldn’t he?

* * *

**20 Hours After**

And this was why, when he woke up, aching and hips sore and feeling kind of light headed, he didn’t turn the lights on. Didn’t stumble into the kitchen for a glass of water or to eat leftover curry in the cold light of the refrigerator.

This was why, when he looked at Guan Shan curled in his sheets, he felt himself tremble at the sight. At the marks on his skin, on his chest, on his arms, at his lips, the hands curved in, the overwhelming vulnerability of him that He Tian had always been drawn to. He remembered the night before, how he’d kind of lost himself for a moment. Lost himself in him. Which was how he seemed to spend most of his time around Guan Shan anyway, but this was on a scale that was… so much bigger. This was gapped memories and only the _feel_ of what last night had been. But it said something about He Tian’s insatiability, about his need for more – more of him – that he was ready to do it again.

 _Maybe,_ he thought to himself wryly, _a little slower this morning._

But it was why, when he looked at him, and his eyes slid past to the phone on the bedside, light blinking, that he reached for it.

Perhaps it should have felt like more than just a piece of glass and plastic in his hand. Perhaps he should have felt some greater moral twinge at the idea, but he put in the passcode to Guan Shan’s phone and let it glow. It was nearly seven in the morning, still dark out, and the light created a small puddle of neon daylight in the bedroom, lit up He Tian’s face, cast hazy and dim onto Guan Shan’s skin and made him swallow now that he was clearer.

He skimmed through the phone calls, through the texts that were only from He Tian and to his mother – a few, strangely, to Zhengxi or Jian Yi – checked through the browser history that revealed searches for local employment opportunities and types of flowers that grew best in winter and bookmarked recipes and something about meaningful birthday gifts for people who had everything and—

‘What the fuck. Are you doing.’

He Tian stilled. Hadn’t really, ever, been called out on something before. And when he had he could use a smile and maybe a wink if he knew it would work, a vague apology that this wasn’t what it looked like and he just got a tad confused and – what was he supposed to say to Guan Shan? Guan Shan who knew him. Who’d always known him. The one that He Tian liked exactly _because_ he knew what sort of person he was and had never had to assume.

And Guan Shan’s voice, hoarse and gravelly from sleepy and sex said he knew exactly what this was. Didn’t, even, have to assume.

He glanced over his shoulder. Held the phone up. ‘Your phone was ringing. I just—’

‘No it wasn’t,’ Guan Shan said. He was sitting up, knees drawn up beneath the sheets, arms wound around them. His expression was unreadable. ‘Because the only one that has my number is you and my ma. And my ma doesn’t call me when she’s at Huai’s. Ever.’

He could have been defensive. Really, that would have been the better thing to do. But he said: ‘Your boss doesn’t have your number? From the fuel station?’

‘What?’

‘Your boss. He doesn’t have your number? If you need to cover a shift?’

Guan Shan stared. ‘Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck are you trying to say?’

‘I’m just…’ And yeah. What was he trying to say? Trying to accuse him for something that _didn’t exist?_ Accusing the guy he’d just spent the long hours from the night before fucking? Suspicious of someone he thought lately he might have been falling in love with. Someone who he’d been giving everything to.

Like, now, it suddenly all hadn’t been enough. Had to listen to the words of some snide guy with too much gel in his hair from his office job because he couldn’t fucking _help_ himself. Couldn’t not touch that glow of curiosity that lingered. Couldn’t not trust wholly, fully, completely, once someone had planted the seed. And what did that say about him? About his own gullibility? About his own desire for some sort of chaos when everything was getting _normal_ for once.

He said, eventually, ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

And Guan Shan said, ‘Yeah. You fucking weren’t. Now get the fuck out.’

‘This is my apartment.’

‘Oh, really?’ he said. He threw the duvet back, pulled on the pair of jeans on the floor. Didn’t bother to button them up, t-shirt pulled on inside-out over his head. ‘Then I guess I’ll do the fucking _honours_.’

‘Guan Shan I was _worried_ about—’

‘Don’t even fucking try it,’ he warned. Snatched the phone from He Tian’s hands; he’d been holding it still, the plastic and metal growing warm in his hands. He stood by the door, hand pressed on the frame. ‘You could have fucking _asked_ , He Tian. Might have given you an answer.’

‘I did ask. And I felt like you weren’t. Felt like… You were going behind my back.’

‘Yeah? Well I wasn’t. But I guess now you know what it fucking feels like.’

And the door slammed shut, and it was followed by the clatter of the front door, and He Tian thought to himself, dropped his head in his hands, _Yeah. I know what it feels like. It feels like this._

* * *

The factory smelled of chlorine and chemicals; it was pressing and burned Jian Yi’s nose through the mask he wore. There was something sour about it, something that stuck in the lining of his throat and made him want to climb a mountain and just get to breathe something that wouldn’t go into methamphetamine and powdered highs and washing detergent.

The workers were in white: White suits that covered their hands, their faces, eyes staring out small and distorted from behind masks, and Jian Yi didn’t look at them long. Didn’t want to be there long. This strange, chemical haven filled with white walls and white floors and people in white, like this was the human vision of purity. Like this was what waited for the lost souls at the golden gate.

They left eventually, pulled off their marks and their hazard suits. Feng put a hand on the small of his back, guided him into Jen Ta’s office. It overlooked the Yangtze river in the Economic and Technological Development Zone, an area filled with factories and warehouses and structures that puffed out a lazy smog of emissions in the late morning light, huge shipping barges weighed down with metal containers drifting along water that looked grey and cold and ready to start freezing in the coming weeks.

‘Your thoughts, Jian Yi?’

Jian Yi looked away from the window, towards the man perched on the edge of his desk, suited and remarkably plain. There was nothing distinctive about his features. Nothing remarkable about his suit. Expensive but not enough to make it seem so. A watch that glinted but didn’t shine. Eyes that were dark and large behind black-rimmed glasses, but still – dull.

‘It’s fucking dangerous are my thoughts.’

‘I think what Jian Yi means to say—’

‘No, I know what I meant to say, Feng.’

Jen Ta snorted. ‘I thought you liked things somewhat on the edge.’

‘Sure,’ Jian Yi said. ‘But isn’t there a difference between running a factory to produce drug chemicals under the guise of creating washing detergent for a company owned by the American mafia and… Well. Living _somewhat_ on the edge.’

‘It’s fine,’ Jen Ta said. ‘The Food and Drug Administration looked it all over.’

‘How much did you spend in bribes?’

Jen Ta smiled. It was a blank thing, and held nothing in it. ‘I don’t need to bribe people, Jian Yi. I do the job properly the first time.’

Jian Yi stepped forward, made to say something – didn’t know what, but it probably began with fuck and ended with you – but Feng’s hand was still on his back, fingers pressing hard into his spine in warning, and he cleared his throat.

Jen Ta cast a glance between them. Folded his arms. ‘That’s right. Forgot you were still a leashed bitch.’ He tilted his head at Feng. ‘First the father and now the son?’

‘Fuck you,’ Jian Yi spat. Felt it come out reflexively as it always had with him.

‘Jian Yi—’

‘That’s right. Listen to Feng, _Jian Yi_.’

Jian Yi had to grit his teeth, listen to the enamel rubbing together in his head like scraping bricks. Because he thought if he didn’t have that distraction otherwise that he might throw up.

Because it had been Jen Ta, after everything, that _caused_ everything. The one who saw the potential in Jian Yi to be used. The one who didn’t care enough when Zhao and the other men got creative. When they saw that he cried too easily. When they saw how pale his flesh was, how pretty it looked scarred, burnt. How his screams used to sound like a girl’s. How he used to murmur Zhengxi’s name always. Like that was some sort of anchor, some kind of reality – fantasy? – that he could escape to.

And they asked why he didn’t cry for his father, since he was the reason all of it had been happening, the reason why they used to button him up in shirts and suits and brush his hair and tell him to smile for them and push him out to people who used to run their eyes over some sixteen year old boy that they’d wanted to see for a satisfied curiosity. Half the time that’s all it had been. Curiosity. What kind of son Mr Jian, the Mountain Master, could have created.

Sometimes it was fun, because they were the kind of people that were sadists, that got where they were because everything was faintly erotic and amusing to them. Sometimes it was some morbid curiosity to see a child play dress-up. Sometimes it was because they believed, quite legitimately, that the only one that could carry out the work, that could maintain the reputation, the business ethos, the reliability of all that Jian Yi’s father had created, was Jian Yi himself.

And Jian Yi wanted to tell them how fucking stupid they all were.

Except that Jen Ta had been there. His plainness unnerving, his unwavering stare cold and fixing, watching him in the hotel lobbies, in the bars, across the tables in the casinos, across the fighting rings that sprayed sweat and blood and teeth into the crowd. And Jian Yi hadn’t told them anything but what he was supposed to, because he wished that look hadn’t meant much – hadn’t bothered him much, but it did.

‘You asked me here for a reason,’ Jian Yi said. ‘Now you’d better fucking tell me or—’

‘I suggest you _don’t_ finish that,’ Jen Ta said, giving him a look that was disapproving. Like he was a homeroom teacher or a police officer who’d just caught a kid stealing a chocolate bar. But that disapproving that Jen Ta held, inwardly, was not the same. His was a warning of missing fingers and blunt objects and rusty knives. ‘You’re older but you’re clearly not smarter. Don’t get arrogant with me.’

‘Isn’t that what you wanted? Wouldn’t that make me convincing?’

Jen Ta hummed, considering. ‘You have a very interesting perception of the kind of man your father was. But arrogant was not it.’

Jian Yi watched as Jen Ta walked around to the other side of the desk. He pulled a small key from his trouser pocket, leaned down and unlocked the small door in the right of the desk. He pulled out a small tablet computer, laid it on the surface of the desk, plugged in a USB stick that he plucked from the inside of a book on the shelf behind him. Jen Ta swiped across the screen a few times, entered passwords, and then a document glowed up at them.

‘This,’ he said. ‘The Americans want us to supply them with ammonia hydroxide for methamphetamine, which is what we’ve been doing for the past five years. But now I need you to oversee negotiations with them and get a contract. A couple of our men need entry to the States to get in the casinos. They said they’ll arrange the visas with the US Embassy if we send them a higher shipment than usual. They won’t get in with their records otherwise.’

Jian Yi came around the desk to stand beside him. He looked at the tablet. ‘I don’t do this sort of thing.’

‘You mean you’ll handle heroin and coke but not meth? Strange sense of morality, Jian Yi.’

‘I mean I don’t do _this_. I do border smuggling. Things that have been set for ten years and only need reaffirming. Not new negotiations for whatever _thing_ you’ve got going with the US _mob_.’

Jen Ta blinked. ‘I think you’ll do what I say you’ll do.’

‘Will I?’ Jian Yi said, flicking through the document on the tablet screen, not really bothered with reading the jumble of text. ‘What is it this time? They want to get a good _look_ at me? Maybe they want to see if I smile the same way as he did? Do they want to measure our fucking handshake grip?’

‘Your father set up a payment system with them that I don’t have access to. They’re still using it for every transaction we make and they won’t… They _refuse_ to adapt to my methods.’

Jian Yi listened. Let a slow, steady smile creep across his face. ‘I bet that’s _really_ pissing you off, isn’t it? Couldn’t handle 14K on your own. Can’t handle this. What, exactly, _can_ you handle, Jen Ta?’

‘You have two options,’ Jen Ta said, ignoring him. He had his hands on the desk, so close to Jian Yi that he felt the brush of his suit on his arm, felt his breath when he turned his head and talked to him. He smelled of chemicals and something sickly sweet like candied apples, just like Jian Yi remembered. ‘One: You speak with your father and get him to give you access, which you will then pass on to me. Or two: You persuade them that I am efficient enough to set up a new, secure network for all financial transactions to go through. The latter would be preferable.’

He pretended the first hadn’t been an option. ‘You want me to sing your praises? That’s going to take some convincing.’

Jen Ta leaned closer. ‘I think you’re pretty good at that, aren’t you?’ His voice was soft, and quiet, something like river water flowing at midnight. And his eyes, for a moment, fell onto his lips.

‘I’m not your _puppet,_ Jen Ta. If I do this I do it on my terms.’

‘You’re so…’ Jen Ta paused. Thought. Settled on: ‘ _Recalcitrant_.’

‘No I’m not. But I can _make_ all this fucking difficult for you if you want.’

‘And what would Zhan Zhengxi say about that? 

Jian Yi felt his jaw shift, couldn’t help that his heart _still_ skipped in his chest and something felt thick in his throat. ‘That threat is growing old.’

 ‘I thought it would be  _burning_. Seeing as you two fags are, you know,  _doing_ it now.’

Feng stepped forward. ‘Jen Ta…’

‘Fuck off, Feng. Four eight nine isn’t here and he hasn’t been here for a  _while_.’ There was a moment when no one said anything, and then Jen Ta walked around the desk. He was smaller than Feng, slighter, and Feng didn’t move when he was most pressed up against him, mouth level with his throat, head tilted up to speak to him. Feng’s eyes fell somewhere passed him. Incidentally, that was on Jian Yi. ‘This is  _ours_ now. We control what business we conduct. We control who we conduct it with. We—’

‘Do not control me,’ Feng cut in. His voice was deep and gravelly. ‘And you don’t control him.’

Jen Ta stepped back. ‘Don’t I? Because you’re still here. And so is he.’

‘Because I’m keeping him safe and he’s keep someone else safe. You really lack so much integrity and emotion that you don’t get that people will do what you want when you threaten people they love? People they care about?’

At this, Jen Ta laughed. Like everything, it was a dull sound. Hollow and empty. When Jian Yi heard it it was not because he was amused, and so the sound of it now made him tremble.

‘Oh, I _get_ it,’ Jen Ta said. ‘But you’re still making choices. You’re  _still_ here when you could not be. If you  _really_ wanted.’

‘And when he’s not behind bars anymore? What are you going to do when he’s released?’

‘He’s not gettingout, Feng. He’s _never_ getting out. It’s astounding that he hasn’t been injected or shot by now.’

Feng was watching him, considering. ‘Not getting out because you’ve got people on the inside? In the courts?’ He shook his head. ‘And you’re calling me an idiot? He’s practically got the Prime Minister in his  _pocket_ , Jen Ta. He won’t be there long.’ Suddenly Feng laughed, and his had always been warm and kind of unexpected. A startled thing that Jian Yi, sometimes, had wrung from him when he hadn’t want to let it go. But now it, almost, sounded like Jen Ta’s. ‘That’s always been your problem. You want money and power so much that you start underestimating everyone else’s worth. Everyone else’s strength.’ 

‘And you underestimate me, Feng. You’re lucky you still get to do that.’ 

‘We’ll see about that,’ Feng said, and Jian Yi heard his words echoing in his head. _If something happens to me, I want you to get out, okay?_

And Jian Yi heard them, and had the distinct impression that he was watching this unravel out in front him, like watching a family drama through a steamed up window, or a fuzzy TV box. Like suddenly he was a child, watching the New Year Reunion Dinner unravel in front of him and the food was cold and everyone had been drinking too much and people were shouting and the sound of flesh was hitting flesh and smashed glass and everything, suddenly, had lost that pretty red glow and the fireworks were deafening and too bright. And it was, suddenly, macabre and vile. And everything was distorted and it became _adult_ in a way that a child couldn’t comprehend, because what made that distinction? What, suddenly, made it _other_?

And Jen Ta said, ‘Yes. We’ll see, Feng,’ and Jian Yi thought that still he had no answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150538653244/aphorism-xxix


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150591134859/aphorism-xxx

Zhengxi thought that Sundays were meant for this. Playing Mahjong at a table in the park as the sun rose in a wintry light. Throwing a stick for Abel that made her dart across grass littered with brown leaves, crunching under foot, laughing as Jian Yi took his turn to throw and it was _pathetic_ and their breath, their laughter that was strangely hysterical without really needing to be, like they were drunk on something, came out clouded and white.

It was mostly empty, because most people were still sleeping and it was so cold that the ground was crisp and slowly retreating from the frost, and the sound of cars was quiet and distant and the birds were louder, soft in their singing. Made the whole thing, for an hour, seem like a fairy tale before the city had fully woken itself up and reared its head.

There was a jogging group that looped around where they sat, and an old man who tottered around the park with his daughter – granddaughter? Wife? – at his side while they made their slow circuit.

It was blissful in its calmness, and Zhengxi couldn’t help but notice how Jian Yi shivered in his jacket; how he moved his pieces without really thinking because he’d never really _gotten it_ , and how he kept glancing – sometimes at the joggers or the old man – sometimes just around. Like he was jealous of them, perhaps. Like he was curious of the lives they were leading. Like he was waiting for something to appear and ruin it. And Zhengxi wanted to tell him that everything was fine and it would _be_ fine so long as he was there. But, really, he couldn’t make that sort of promise anymore.

Because Jian Yi, he’d come to notice, had come to _accept_ , was not the same person. Had not, anymore, lived through the same experiences that he had. Had _had_ to keep that sort of sharp awareness about him because maybe that’s how he’d stayed alive.

He looked at him. Thought about how it was Christmas next month. How New Year’s would come. And then Spring, and then they’d be slipping into the hot thickness of summer again that felt just as harsh and unbearable as the winter could be, and a whole year would have gone.

‘I can be patient,’ Jian Yi had told him last week in a moment of strange honesty they had shared. When Zhengxi had said he didn’t really want to, you know, _do it_ yet. Wasn’t sure he was ready. Which, hilarious, right? Because it had been almost twenty years and he was a guy and he wasn’t _ready_?

And Zhengxi had believed him. He had. But he was so aware that they were losing things with _patience._

‘Why can’t you stay?’ he asked him now. Abel was wandering in front of them, tugging on her lead, nails tapping on the freezing pavement as they made their way back to Jian Yi’s pavement. Her tongue lolled and Zhengxi found her fascination with everything fascinating in itself. Wondered what it would be like to be so lost in everything, in all that the world had to offer. He wondered if that’s what it was like being in love with Jian Yi.

‘Hm?’ Jian Yi said. He was sliding through something on his phone that probably wasn’t school work. Zhengxi was growing used to this. The slight detachment that happened between Jian Yi and the reality of now, and Zhengxi hadn’t ever really asked anything other than to learn more about Feng, this elusive character that Jian Yi talked about with a pained sort of fondness. Or he asked him if he was being safe. Or asked if he had to ‘go away this time’.

‘Why can’t you stay?’ Zhengxi said. ‘Stay in Nanjing.’

Jian Yi was listening now, and he sighed, shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jacket, let his mouth hide behind the high, zipped up collar.

‘Xixi…’

‘I’m serious. You’re—I mean, you’re working for them now. Going to fucking Hong Kong and Shanghai after school. Is that—Isn’t that working for you?’

Jian Yi sighed again. Shrugged. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Not really. We’re—They’re international. They want me to travel. We can’t keep expecting the clients and partners to keep coming to China all the time. It doesn’t look good.’  

Zhengxi saw the struggle – the way he flitted between pronouns like he couldn’t figure out his own identity. Didn’t fully know where he stood in the scheme of it all. Didn’t want Zhengxi to be thinking he was something that he wasn’t. Or maybe that he was, but didn’t want to be.  

‘I’d—I could come with you—’

‘ _No_ ,’ Jian Yi said. His voice, his face, was full of horror. 

‘Then I’d wait for you. Be here when you came back.’ 

‘I couldn’t ask you to do that. What if I never came back?’ 

‘I said I’d protect you, Jian Yi. You’ll come back.’ 

And Jian Yi didn’t say anything to that, just fell into some deep silence as they walked into the fancy lobby of the apartment building, rode the elevator to his floor. Zhengxi couldn’t help the glances he threw at him, because he was waiting for Jian Yi to dispute him again. To argue with him. At least, that was what he was supposed to do. Wasn’t just supposed to be a fucking pessimistic little shit and think the worst because that wasn’t _him_ goddamnit. That wasn’t who he was. And when—When had he become that? Why hadn’t Zhengxi been there to stop it.

And when they came back inside the apartment was hot because they’d left the heating on too high and Jian Yi didn’t even hesitate – just stripped off his shirt and wandered over to the fancy machine he’d bought that made hot chocolate.

‘Want one?’ he said.

‘Sure,’ Zhengxi said. He sat one of the stools around the island counter, just watched his back, the movement of his shoulder blades, tried not to notice how the golden early morning light that seeped through the blinds in the living area lit up his scars like they were on fire.

Jian Yi passed him a mug, and it was too sweet when he tasted it on his tongue, too hot so that it burnt his tongue a little.

‘Should I have salted it?’ Jian Yi said, joking, taking deep mouthfuls like it didn’t bother him. He had chocolate on his lips.

‘Your obsession with sugar is your issue, not mine.’

‘Really?’ Jian Yi said, still grinning.

Zhengxi held a hand out. ‘Come here,’ he said.

Jian Yi paused, for a moment, watched as Zhengxi pulled off his jacket because it was too hot in there even though the windows were open now and letting bitter air through. And then he came over, stopped in front of Zhengxi until their legs knocked together, and Zhengxi had to look up at Jian Yi slightly from where he sat, feet scuffing on the floor.

Jian Yi’s skin was cold under his hand when he touched him, covered in a layer of goosebumps, his nipples hard, and Zhengxi didn’t need to ask when he reached up, put a hand on the back of his neck, pulled him into him. He could taste the chocolate on his tongue, licked it off his lips, thought it tasted better like this. Vaguely he thought about how remarkable it was that he could just _do this._

 _‘Xi_ ,’ Jian Yi breathed, and Zhengxi saw that, yeah, he was hard. And he thought, again, how remarkable it was that even kissing him he could do _that_.

Zhengxi stood, left their mugs on the counter, Jian Yi’s nearly empty, his own barely touched, pulled him by the hand to the sofa, scattered with a soft throw and cushions that they fell against. Well, that Zhengxi fell against, because suddenly Jian Yi was straddling him and pressing himself against him and his pale skin was everywhere and his lips were on Zhengxi’s neck and Zhengxi remembered what it was like to be overwhelmed by a person again.

‘Jian Yi,’ he said, because he was pressing down on him, rocking against him, and it was a fucking _torment._

‘Just kissing,’ Jian Yi murmured, lips brushing across his neck and his jaw and his eyelids that fluttered shut and his collarbones that peeked out from behind a thin sweatshirt that he felt suddenly hot in.

And then his lips drifted back to Zhengxi’s, caught them between his teeth, and Zhengxi pushed his tongue into Jian Yi’s mouth because he could and because he wanted to chase the taste of him, and he let his hands run over his skin that felt like nothing else he’d ever felt. Jian Yi’s stomach trembled under his hands, and his ribs and his spine were like small ridges beneath his drifting fingertips, feeling like if he closed his mind and concentrated hard enough he could map him out of in his sleep.

But he couldn’t concentrate because Jian Yi was everywhere and he was tugging at the hem of Zhengxi’s shirt, pulling it over his his head, tracing the path it made with his lips.

Jian Yi said, ‘This is good,’ rocking into him, harder until they both groaned, and Zhengxi wasn’t sure who he was telling.

‘Not sure this is kissing,’ Zhengxi said. And when Jian Yi just grinned he said, ‘You’d tell me fucking was kissing if you thought you could get away with it.’

Jian Yi leaned in. ‘Could I?’

And Zhengxi swallowed. ‘One day.’

‘Mm,’ Jian Yi said, speaking into the skin behind his ear, letting his teeth scrape along his earlobe until he trembled. He said, not for the first time, ‘I can be patient.’

‘Really?’

Jian Yi shifted in his lap, and for a moment they both stilled. The brush of hardness that was almost too much. And Zhengxi groaned when Jian Yi moaned a breathy ‘ _Absolutely_ ,’ in his ear.

‘You’re gonna make me come in my pants like I’m fifteen,’ he told him.

Jian Yi drew back, until their eyes were level, but he didn’t stop moving, just kept up that slow rocking that barely even built up a pressure, was barely even friction, was just enough that Zhengxi could feel his toes curling into the floor, could feel something building so fucking slowly. ‘I don’t remember that happening.’

 _Fuck._ ‘You were—You were asleep.’

Jian Yi groaned, let his head fall on Zhengxi’s shoulder. ‘Fuck me. I was there and I didn’t even get to fucking see it.’

‘Not sure what I would have done if you did.’

‘Were you thinking about me?’ Jian Yi whispered. Pressed down a little so that Zhengxi had to let his head roll back, nearly let his hips jerk up but the weight of him made it impossible.

‘I—Yeah…’

‘Thinking about me rubbing up against you?’

‘Yeah…’

He was _grinding_ against him now, fucking using him just to create a friction. ‘Thought about my lips around your cock when you woke up, yeah? Thought about my hand around you under the desk when you thought the teacher wasn’t looking? Yeah, Zhengxi?’

‘ _Yeah_. Fucking hell, yes…’

‘Thought about shoving your cock down my throat when I wouldn’t shut up? Thought about fucking into me with your hands in my hair, yeah? Thought about just turning me over and taking me and pressing my face into the mattress? Coming in me, just letting me leak and take everything you gave me?’

‘Fuck, Jian Yi—’

‘Come on,’ Jian Yi said, because he wasn’t stopping now. They weren’t stopping. It was like being on a fucking freight train. And it was just building, just growing and becoming something that was chaotic and shuddering and breathless and brimming over ready to be spilled but Zhengxi couldn’t. _Couldn’t._

‘ _Come on_ ,’ Jian Yi groaned again, tight and hitched, fingers locking into his on the sofa cushions. ‘Not coming without you.’

He kept going. Kept going until he fucking _whined_ because he was _so close_ and Zhengxi _couldn’t._ And it got to the point where it was suffocating, because it was brimming and the glass kept getting higher and more was being poured in and Zhengxi couldn’t keep up and he wanted to _he wanted to_ but—

‘Fuck it,’ Jian Yi said.

And suddenly he was on his knees and he had a hand between his legs and the other hand was pulling Zhengxi’s cock out from the waistband of his joggers and he just fucking _took him all the way,_ slid his mouth down onto his cock like it was a fucking ice pop, nose bumping up against his abdomen like he didn’t even have a fucking gag reflex and it was like, if Zhengxi had more to give, he wouldn’t even have an issue just taking it, swallowing around him until Zhengxi’s hips were bucking up, fucking into his throat just like Jian Yi said he would, hands fisting into his hair because fuck if he didn’t have a complex about it, how it fell around his face, brushed against his cock when Jian Yi finally came up for air, how soft it was.

And eventually Jian Yi’s eyes went wild, pupils blown so they filled the whites and his lips were so fucking wet and god Zhengxi was choking him now, garbled noises that he could feel vibrating through his cock, but Jian Yi didn’t even care that he was just _using him_ , like it was what he _wanted._

And then suddenly Zhengxi’s grip loosened and Jian Yi pulled off him, so slowly, like he didn’t need to breathe, eyes didn’t leave his for a second, and his teeth scraped along the length of him and Zhengxi cried out and he was only off him for a minute – a second – the feel of air across his skin making him feel cold and weirdly empty, and then he just fucking swallowed him down again like it was _possible_ and it was only the feel of _that_ and the idea of it, the idea of his come down Jian Yi’s throat and smeared across his lips, tongue darting out to catch it, that finally made him see stars.

 

* * *

 

Xixi showered first, and for a while Jian Yi just lay sprawled on the sofa in a kind of daze because he could still taste him on his lips. Still felt the press off something down his throat like Xixi had made his mark and stayed there. Like the inside of him had had to re-make itself for the shape of him.

For a second, a minute, Jian Yi allowed himself a giddy laugh that just said _fucking hell_. Because he’d done that. Sticky release over his hand while Xixi fell apart in his mouth, under his hand, in front of his eyes. Felt him, suddenly, everywhere around him.

He felt loose and limbless, thought about not moving, about getting Xixi to carry him to the shower when he was done. Thought about getting up now and joining him.

But he didn’t want to scare him. Knew he’d taken a risk already in doing what he did. Half-expected Xixi to push him off and ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing. But he hadn’t. Lost in it all – in him; in himself. And Jian Yi wondered, now, if he’d think about how good Jian Yi could make it all. If he thought that maybe he wouldn’t mind seeing if he could make the rest of it good for him.

‘You could imagine I’m a girl,’ he’d said to him once, a few days, maybe weeks ago, hearing He Tian’s words echoing in his head.

But Zhengxi’s face had screwed up and he’d given him a strange look because, ‘Why would I want to imagine you were anything other than you?’

And Jian Yi had felt kind of guilty because of course Xixi wasn’t the sort of person that wouldn’t give it his all. Would immerse himself in it. Wouldn’t need to pretend that something else was happening for him to get through it all.

And he was lying there still, could hear the shower still running and Xixi moving about in the bathroom, when the doorbell rang.

He thought about ignoring it. Thought also how strange it was that anyone would ever come to his door. Which was why he grabbed the knife from the knife block before peering through the eyehole on the door. Pretended he hadn’t let out a sigh of relief when he saw a familiar figure, lean and dark-haired and looking rather moody.

‘This is a surprise,’ Jian Yi said, opening the door and stepping aside. Put the knife down on the side table in the hall.

He Tian wandered in without a word, found the bottle of vodka that Jian Yi kept in the freezer, took a swig. Winced. Took another.

‘Well,’ Jian Yi said, following behind him. He watched as He Tian just held onto the bottle and leaned against the sink, let his head kind of fall.

‘I fucked up, Jian Yi,’ he said.

He said it, and Jian Yi felt something go kind of quiet. Like something had fallen in the room, even if now Xixi was playing the radio in the bathroom and the shower was still going.

He said, carefully, quietly. ‘Do you… Need something cleaning up?’

‘What?’ He Tian said. And then he blinked. ‘No. Fuck. No, that’s not… Why would you… No. It’s Guan Shan.’

And this didn’t make Jian Yi feel any less that weird calmness that he’d, subconsciously, cultivated over the past few years. Had needed it to get through what he had, really.

‘He’s okay?’

‘He’s fine. Jian Yi. _God_. No one’s fucking _dead_.’

‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘I went through his phone. Last week. He still won’t speak to me.’

Jian Yi frowned. He wandered over to the counter, swirled his finger through the mug of Xixi’s hot chocolate that had gone cold a while ago, sucked layer of it his finger.

‘Why did you go through his phone?’ he asked eventually.

‘Because I thought he was lying to me about something.’

‘And was he?’

‘No. Which is why I’m the one that fucked up here.’

‘Did you apologise?’

‘What do you think, fuckwit?’

Jian Yi rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not the one that went behind his boyfriend’s back.’

‘Because you two share _everything_ now.’

Jian Yi blinked. ‘Actually, yeah. Pretty much.’

He Tian scoffed. The sound of it was filled with an arrogance that was only really envious, and Jian Yi knew that he’d wanted, always, what the two of them had had. And at one point he’d gotten it. Had loved it, when they met up for drinks along the river, and He Tian had declared he and Guan Shan an item, just to rub it on the face of the two people who always seemed to have it better than him.

Jian Yi saw that now. But he wanted to tell them he had it wrong. It had never been better. Or simpler. There was nothing remotely superlative or greater about what he and Xixi had. Everyone, which He Tian didn’t realise, had their own shit to deal with. And apparently this was his.

‘It’ll sort itself out,’ Jian Yi sighed. Not really sure what else he was supposed to say. Didn’t really think the rest of his Sunday was supposed to go like this. It was supposed to be binge-watching TV with his head in Xixi’s lap and Xixi’s hands running through his hair, nails across his scalp until he shivered. Was supposed to be about eating shit food when he wasn’t looking and writing an essay for school while Xixi wrote up lecture notes and maybe doing what they’d already done a few more times. ‘You said last time that you gave him space.’

‘Last time,’ He Tian said. ‘Yeah. Thanks for reminding me that I’m a perpetual fuck-up. You’re a great friend, Jian Yi. Always have my back.’

‘I’m sorry you’re going through shit right now, but you’re spoiling my good mood.’

And He Tian laughed, sharp and unamused, because yeah Jian Yi was being shit, and then he said, ‘Does that have something to do with the fact that it fucking reeks of sex in here right now?’

Jian Yi couldn’t help it. His cheeks burned, and he wanted to bring up a hand to hide some part of himself. He’d thought that crudeness hadn’t embarrassed him, but that was just because it had never been about _him_ , and now that He Tian was talking about him like that, about something that was real, he felt unbearably _visible_.

And as if he could sense it, He Tian’s eyes drifted to the sofa. The strewn pillows. The rumpled throw.

‘We didn’t _do it_ ,’ Jian Yi said, didn’t know why he felt compelled to tell him this, words tripping over themselves. ‘It was just… We haven’t. Yet. I mean, we will. But we just haven’t.’

He Tian looked at him, brows furrowed. ‘Sorry, you’re trying to explain this to me and I’m not—I don’t quite _get it_.’

‘What’s not to get?’

‘You haven’t fucked? And you’ve been back for, like, three months?’

‘He doesn’t want to fuck,’ Jian Yi said. He didn’t need to remind him that they’d only fucking kissed barely a few weeks ago. ‘He’s not ready for that.’

‘But he’s happy to have you getting carpet burn as you suck him off? Happy to take from you but not let you have anything back?’

‘That’s not what this is about—’

‘No? Because that’s what it seems like it is, Jian Yi. Seems exactly like it’s always been.’

‘What?’

‘He’s fucking using you, Jian Yi. Leads you on. Says things to you that, no offence, no straight guy would ever fucking say. And then he fucking flips because you _act on it_ and he pretends that’s not what he wanted? I’m sorry but that is _bullshit._ ’

‘Stop being a fucking douche, He Tian. Just because you had a fucking _tiff_ with Red, don’t take it out on—’

‘Don’t fucking _call_ him that. His name’s not fucking _Red_ , okay?’

Jian Yi blinked, because He Tian had him up against the counter and his vision clouded for a second, head knocked against the cupboard in a way that didn’t feel quite right.

Jian Yi, slowly, let out a breath. ‘Okay,’ he said steadily, even, because He Tian had a kind of look in his eye that he’d seen once or twice in middle school. And it had been odd because it didn’t fit on his face that was still young. But now… Now it did. And it was kind of terrifying. ‘I won’t call him that.’

Neither of them moved for a while, and Jian Yi could have told him to get the fuck off him, but he didn’t, because something was happening that he wasn’t quite seeing, something behind He Tian’s eyes. And then his phone rang.

He Tian looked confused for a second, and Jian Yi waited until he came back to himself, stepped back, jerked his head towards Jian Yi in a way that told him to just fucking answer it.

Jian Yi almost punched the answer button, swiping the phone from the counter and moving over to the windows of the living area. ‘Timing, Feng,’ he muttered. ‘Timing. Now you’d better be fucking dying or I swear to God—’

‘Is everything okay?’

Jian Yi would have gaped at him if he could seem him. ‘What? Yeah. Everything’s… Are you—are you _watching_ me?’ He clenched his jaw, lowered his voice because He Tian’s back was to him, still in the kitchen, but that wasn’t to say he wasn’t listening. ‘Did you bug my fucking _phone_?’

‘That’s not important right now. I forgot to tell you something at Jen Ta’s factory.’

‘Better fucking make my day, Feng.’

‘I’m sorry, Jian Yi.’

Jian Yi waited. ‘Is that it?’

‘Look, I just wanted to… I still feel—’

‘Stop apologising, all right? It’s not… Really your fault.’

‘That’s not what you said last month.’

Jian Yi sighed. ‘I was angry.’

‘I saw that… And no. That wasn’t it. I’m calling about a gang in Nanjing. They’re local, but they’re growing. They requested a meeting with us a while back. They want to become one of the city branches. They want to do it next week.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ he said, voice barely above a whisper. ‘I thought our Internal Trade sub-group dealt with local dealers?’

‘Because they’re mostly in Hong Kong, ironing things out with 14K after the trip we made. And you’re already here. Makes sense.’

‘Fine,’ Jian Yi said eventually. Didn’t really even think about it. Because it sounded easy, really. He’d have the upper hand. They’d be pandering to work with him. And the thing was, they wouldn’t really know his father. Would never have worked with him before. Would work for Jian Yi because he was Jian Yi. Not because he was the Mountain Master’s son.

Jian Yi shouldn’t have liked the idea of it. The thrill of control and power it suggested. But he did.

‘Tell Finances to get a proposal from them for me. I’m not agreeing to anything otherwise. And then just… Just tell me when and where I need to be.’

And Feng said, ‘You’re starting to sound like your father.’

Jian Yi couldn’t help it. He glanced at He Tian. Didn’t keep his voice quiet when he said, ‘Tired of everyone’s bullshit?’

‘No,’ said Feng. ‘Capable.’ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150591134859/aphorism-xxx


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150741645419/aphorism-xxxi-a-19-days-fanfic

‘We had a tip off. Apparently they’re meeting with someone big. My brother says we’ll be sending in the raiders.’

Zhengxi wondered what it was about He Tian that made him, some of the time, incapable of keeping his mouth shut. It shouldn’t have been that difficult, should it? That he couldn’t keep the discretion of his brother’s company? That he couldn’t just _not_ tell them things that they wouldn’t, normally, be that interested in if it wasn’t that there was a glaring conflict of interest at hand.

Perhaps, he supposed, it said something that He Tian felt compelled to tell them. Not because he felt he had to indulge secrets with them, like he was offering information on a reciprocal basis, hoping to gain something from them. Probably, he told them because he could. Because he had people who would listen and nod and fake interest if they weren’t – which they were. Had people, for once, who he could talk to. 

Maybe it was because Guan Shan wasn’t there. Maybe he’d already told Guan Shan, but there were bags under his eyes and he’d smoked a pack in an hour and he was already on his third bottle of beer, so Zhengxi thought he probably hadn’t told him. Hadn’t told him anything lately.

It was because he had something to say, and he thought that telling each other everything – anything, even if he shouldn’t – was what they did. Was a part of the whole ‘friend’ package.

‘Should you be telling us this?’ Zhengxi asked, conscious that Jian Yi kept flitting between an overt nonchalance and an eager interest that said too much. They’d gone to the bar along Qinhuai River again, but this time it was quieter and the news played instead of basketball – something about how much people were going to spend at Christmas and a few reports and interviews for a failing banking corporation – but more noticeable was Guan Shan. The lack, thereof.

And when he and Jian Yi had turned up and he wasn’t there and He Tian was and they weren’t sitting there eye-fucking each other across the table it was… Odd.

Odd how it had seemed, to Zhengxi, so _obvious_ lately that they were this indomitable unit. This pair that had formed so strangely in middle school. Had lasted through something he had never, and would never, really understand. Had come out of it, still scarred and burning, but together. And Zhengxi admitted that it was not a little unsettling to see He Tian so out of it now that they weren’t. It reminded him, somewhat, of himself. When Jian Yi had left.

He Tian leaned back in his chair, front legs lifted off the floor, cigarette hanging from his lips. He plucked it out, took a swig of beer, said, ‘Well, unless you’re all drug lords and gang dealers then I’m really not sure it matters if I tell you.’

Zhengxi looked at Jian Yi, because he choked a bit on a glass of pear juice. _Is he joking?_

Jian Yi just, wide-eyed, shrugged. _How the hell should I know?_

‘Ha,’ Zhengxi said. ‘Guess you’re right.’ He swallowed, ran the edge of his spoon through the fried rice he’d ordered, not, now, particularly hungry.

He Tian gave off the distinct impression that Zhengxi thought a leopard with a headache might. And everyone had to tread so damned _carefully_ around him or risk claws cutting through their jugulars. It was tiring, really, having to be around him, but then Zhengxi remembered what he’d been like after Jian Yi had left. And that had been for more than two years. And he thought the least he could do now was show some faint concern for a guy that had fucked up and knew that, inevitably, things would sort themselves out eventually.

‘You said you didn’t know who it was from?’ Jian Yi said.

‘Yeah.’

‘You don’t know which side it was from?’

‘Could have been neither. Could have been a middle-man who wanted to screw one or both of them over.’

‘That’s a dangerous game to play,’ Jian Yi said mildly. ‘Especially if the group the gang are meeting are… Important.’

Zhengxi thought he might have heard a warning in those words, not to either of them, but like he was storing something away. It was faintly menacing, and Zhengxi wondered how someone as fair and, frankly, as _pretty_ as Jian Yi could be that.

But He Tian didn’t seem to notice. His eyes had lost focus a while ago, looking somewhere that the two of them couldn’t see anymore, narrowed through the haze of mint-scented smoke he was puffing.

They all saw it at the same time, the phone lit up on the table, vibrating quietly between the plates and the beer bottles. He Tian ground out his cigarette into the ashtray, full of tiny cigarette ends and ash, let his chair legs slam to the floor, and picked it up. His hand was shaking.

‘Yeah?’ he said, voice kind of strangled into the receiver.

Whatever was said at the other end – whoever it was – He Tian stood up. He wandered through the press of bodies in the bar, until they could only make out the vague outline of him beneath the awning outside, night air chill. His expression was predictably unfathomable.

‘Red?’ Zhengxi guessed, glancing at Jian Yi.

‘Maybe,’ Jian Yi said. ‘He’s kind of fucked up about it.’

‘He’ll get over it. He was a dick. What does he expect?’

Jian Yi shrugged. ‘He came over the other day. When you were in the shower.’

‘When?’ Zhengxi said, trying to remember. Wondering why Jian Yi hadn’t told him.

‘Sunday. After we’d—You know.’

Zhengxi cleared his throat. Looked down. He knew. ‘What was he saying?’

‘Nothing important. But…’

‘But?’ Zhengxi prompted.

‘I just… Don’t you think it’s a bit odd? The gang thing? The tip-off? Guan Shan being in a gang in Nanjing before?’

‘Kids join gangs, Jian Yi. Doesn’t mean they stay in them.’

‘I know that. It just… It all seems like it’s obvious, doesn’t it? I mean, why would Guan Shan, really, get so angry about He Tian checking his phone unless he had something to hide?’

Zhengxi frowned. ‘You think he’s the one that gave the tip-off? You think he’s in the gang that want to join the Triad?’

‘Only one way to find out.’

‘You are _not_ going to that meeting _._ You heard He Tian. They’re sending in a fucking SWAT team.’

‘Nah. I’ll tell Feng that we’re withdrawing. But we wont tell the gang that.’

‘What about Guan Shan? If he’s still in it…’

‘Then he’s the one that told He Tian, which means he already knows what He Tian’s company would do. Why the hell would he wait around to get shot or arrested?’

Zhengxi thought about this. The whole thing left him feeling kind of nauseous. He supposed that he never quite felt that way with Jian Yi, not because he thought Jian Yi could handle it, or because he had someone like Feng at his back, but because it was the kind of lifestyle that made up action movies and crime novels. Helicopters and casinos and drug deals in alleyways and under moonlight. It was staged and nothing was really real. Except now that it was.

Except that Zhengxi knew what gangs were like in Nanjing. Knew because of local news reports and web searches. Knew because someone at his university had been dealing for them and got kicked out, police handcuffing him in the middle of a lecture. Knew because there’d been a couple of time when the streets near his apartment had been taped off by the police because there’d been a stabbing. Knew because he’d been at the festival when the fight had broken out, had seen Guan Shan just walk past him like he hadn’t seen him, didn’t know who he was – saw _through him_ – and he’d been covered in red.

‘You’re thinking something and I don’t like what you’re thinking.’

Zhengxi sighed. ‘I just wondered if there was something we could do.’

Jian Yi shrugged, shredding a wet napkin to pieces on the table, like he had to make a mess of anything that was too neat or clean. ‘If there is, then let He Tian deal with it. He’s his boyfriend. He made that pretty fucking clear to us last time.’

‘You know what he’s like.’

‘I do,’ Jian Yi said.

‘Do you think He Tian knows about Guan Shan? Or that he suspects?’

‘If he does… He won’t accept it. He’d pretend it wasn’t real.’ He shook his head and rose to his feet. ‘I need to call Feng. Tell him the meet’s off.’

He was gone for a few minutes when He Tian returned, fell into his chair with an unceremonious slump, lacking all the usual grace that seemed to come so naturally to him.

‘Where’s he gone?’ He Tian said.

‘He had to make a call,’ Zhengxi told him. ‘Someone from school, I think.’

‘Feeling threatened?’

‘Of course I’m fucking not,’ Zhengxi said, rolling his eyes. ‘We don’t have all such sensitive egos as you.’

‘Fuck off.’

Zhengxi shrugged. Scratched his nose. ‘So, er, was that Guan Shan?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And?’

‘And,’ He Tian said, sighing, ‘he says to call him at the end of the week. Said he just needs to get through this week at work and then he’ll be okay.’

‘Work?’

‘Yeah. Night shift at a fuel station.’

‘Of course,’ Zhengxi said quietly. ‘I forgot.’

He wanted to ask He Tian if he’d been to the station; if he’d phoned him at work; if he’d seen Guan Shan’s uniform. But, really, Jian Yi was right. It wasn’t his place. Had never been his place, and He Tian would hate him more than he’d be at all _grateful_.

He should have left it, should have stayed out of it. So he did. But he worried, more, that he might regret it.

* * *

Ah Lam and Yuan Jung were there before him. There were a few others, too, others that Dai Lin never really talked about but used them because they were spare bodies and somewhat useful minds. They were standing in his kitchen like Dai Lin was about to pull a roast duck out the oven, like they were all going to have dinner together because Dai Lin was that kind of benevolent, family-oriented boss. Like he was a welfare-conscious _leader_.

Probably, that was exactly the impression that Dai Lin hoped to show, but the fact that Guan Shan caught onto it, the air, the heavy sort of silence, the way he stood in front of his oven, said it probably _wasn’t_ that kind of evening.

‘You know why we’re here,’ he started, and Guan Shan wanted to roll his eyes because wasn’t that how drug lords in the movies started things? But Dai Lin always had a penchant for the theatrical, and so it wasn’t that surprising.

He told them about the meeting, about the proposal the group had asked for. Didn’t, Guan Shan noticed, tell them any names or locations or anything that was real and solid. The more he talked, the more the others started to straighten where they stood around the kitchen – where they sat around the island counter or at the dining table. There was the uneasy feeling that it was all, actually, quite _big._ Dai Lin used that word a lot – ‘big’. Sometimes he said ‘important’. But he had a thing for trigger words and it made them all a bit more _aware._

‘What does that mean for us?’ one of the women said. She had hair pulled back into a tight pony tail, and wore a leather jacket and leather boots which Guan Shan thought was overkill.

‘What does that _mean_?’ Dai Lin repeated.

Some of them were nodding. The woman said, ‘Will you still keep us in your employ? Will they use their own? How do the profit cuts work with personal sales?’

‘If you’re here, it’s because I want you in my team,’ Dai Lin told them. ‘It’s because I told them I’m keeping you. You know Nanjing better than them. Profits will be negotiated at the meet at the end of the week. I can’t promise anything.’

‘I can’t work with less than what I’m making now, Dai Lin,’ a guy said. He was one of the oldest there, and Guan Shan didn’t recognise him as someone from the gang before he left. ‘My grandkids are trying to get through university and it’s not—it’s not _cheap_.’

‘I know,’ Dai Lin said. ‘We’ve all got things to be paying for. Family to look after.’

Guan Shan didn’t point out the irony of it all, even if he kew he was exactly one of the people that was there for family. Didn’t point out that they were looking after their family but not—not _really_. Really what they were all doing was selfish. Suicidal. Some illusion of grandeur over something that was so far from what they probably thought it was, born of movies and comics and old tales of the men and women that walked the streets at night.

‘We won’t be selling the same product anymore,’ Dai Lin says. ‘They’ll be given us what they make.’

‘What about our supplier?’ Yuan Jung said.

Dai Lin smiled. ‘We won’t be doing business anymore.’

‘And they’re happy with that?’

‘They’ll have to be.’

‘Will our prices change?’ the woman in the leather jacket asked.

Dai Lin nodded. ‘The group keeps a standard price for all products that varies in the cities they work in.’

A guy called Xiao Wen was shaking his head. ‘We’ll lose half our clientele once they hear who we’re distributing for. Especially if our prices go up.’

Dai Lin said, ‘Just because we lose some, doesn’t mean we won’t gain others. The group’s reputable. They’re businessmen who’ve been running this for decades. People will respect that. The higher classes will empathise with that.’

‘Just because they’re mafia it doesn’t make them reputable.’

Dai Lin paused, shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But you can’t tell me they don’t hold the kind of influence and sway that could make us something pretty fucking special.’

‘You said we might not be even keeping the same profit margins. How the fuck does this benefit any of us?’

‘At first, it might not,’ Dai Lin said. Admitted. Guan Shan couldn’t help but notice that he was being remarkably truthful, but then he remembered that Dai Lin had never really… _lied_ to him. He’d made promises he didn’t keep, but was that lying? Was he anything other than brutally blunt in the end? ‘Any merger starts off rocky. But one thing it guarantees us is security. It’s not just street deals with knives at your throats anymore. This is controlled. It’s arranged. It’s _better_.’

‘Better how?’ It was Ah Lam who said this, the first thing she’d said all evening, and even Dai Lin had to pause when she spoke, because she was the eldest, knew more than what the rest of them probably knew. Guan Shan wondered how much Dai Lin had talked this through with her – how much was only his furtive negotiation, and knowing Dai Lin he probably hadn’t told her much.

‘We know you like challenges, Dai Lin,’ Ah Lam continued, which was to say that she knew he had a big fucking god complex. They all did. ‘But so far it’s… Well, this is all for you. Nothing, actually, sounds better about this for us. In fact it sounds pretty shit.’

‘You’re gonna make your own crew, Ah Lam?’ Dai Lin said. It wasn’t a challenge, because Guan Shan knew that in the years she’d been a part of their gang, it had changed hands more times than she had fingers. And not once had she stepped into the empty boots.

‘No,’ she said, which was what they all expected, but Guan Shan didn’t miss the disappointed, wondering flickers that were sent her way. ‘I’m not challenging you. I’m just asking you to be clear with us. What exactly is in it for us other than security that we didn’t really need?’

‘Didn’t need?’ Guan Shan said. He didn’t know why he was speaking, or why he was _defending_ Dai Lin, but he said it all anyway. ‘Didn’t you get shot a few months ago when you got out? Didn’t Ming Fun get scalped and end up dying in the ICU from infection? Didn’t Dang Jia drown last summer because someone tied weights to her feet and pushed her into the Yangtze? This isn’t—this isn’t something safe that you signed up for. You knew this from the beginning. But why shouldn’t you expect it to be? Why shouldn’t that be some sort of prerequisite for this whole thing? They’ve got influence in the courts. In the police prefectures. In the prisons.’

‘And what about your contact?’ Yuan Jung said, looking petulant and suspicious. ‘Are they not good enough?’

‘They’re good,’ Guan Shan said, biting the inside of his cheek, hated that he had to talk about He Tian in this way: vague, elusive, so fucking inadequately. ‘But I’m not putting any expectation on them to always be there. I can’t trust that. It’s not… Permanent like the Triad’s connections.’

He knew Dai Lin was watching him when he said this. Could feel that heavy stare. But he had to ignore it, because he couldn’t let Dai Lin think he was conscious of it. That he had something to hide. That, really, there was the possibility Guan Shan might have used that contact for exactly the wrong purpose.

‘Red’s right,’ Dai Lin said. ‘This is permanence. _Permanence._ This is becoming a solid, recognisable unit. And if we don’t reap rewards at the beginning, you can bet we will soon enough.’

‘And you think if we never do you can make those sorts of demands, Dai Lin?’ Ah Lam said. ‘They’re not… You can’t just leave something like this. My brother got caught up with Triad before and—and it fucking ruined him. Couldn’t speak up. Didn’t have any say.’

Dai Lin just smiled. Just shook his head. ‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘It’ll all work out. You’ll see.’

* * *

Afterwards, Guan Shan stayed behind, because Dai Lin had asked him to, and because Guan Shan needed to speak to him.

‘You first,’ Dai Lin said. He poured himself a glass of white wine from his industrial fridge, hard metal chrome and cold light. The chairs around the table were all slightly skewed, and it made Guan Shan feel like everyone that had been there was still there. That they were all, still, listening. Guan Shan couldn’t stop looking at Dai Lin’s tattoo for some reason, the darkness of it, like it was one huge black bruise across his arm, like it was dead, or like it was some detached part of him that was capable of doing everything that it looked like it could.

‘I’m not going to the meeting,’ Guan Shan said, looking at the arm, wondering how many people Dai Lin had killed and threatened with the hand at the end of it. But he couldn’t say it any other way. Had to ignore that lump in his throat.

Dai Lin, in fact, didn’t say anything. He was looking through a magazine on home design, sipping at his wine. He hadn’t offered Guan Shan anything to drink, which was typical.

Eventually, Guan Shan cleared his throat. Because the silence was strange, and the sound of the pages turning echoed oddly off the stone floors and chrome surfaces. ‘Did you hear—’

‘Oh, I heard,’ Dai Lin said. His voice was light. It was not the good kind of light. ‘I heard.’

‘I’ve got another commitment.’

‘Mm,’ Dai Lin said. His glass was empty now, and he poured another until it nearly flowed to the rim. ‘You know,’ he said, conversational, like Guan Shan hadn’t spoken. ‘I really think you have the potential to be something bigger. I really do.’

‘Bigger?’ Guan Shan asked, but Dai Lin was shaking his head.

‘I’m being kind to you, Red. I’m giving you opportunity. Isn’t this what you want? Isn’t this what your mother would want?’

‘You don’t know my mother.’

‘Sure I do,’ he said easily. ‘We had tea together last week. It was very pleasant. Very pleasant.’

Guan Shan stilled. He breathed. ‘What?’ he said, and his voice was so faint to his own ears that he wasn’t fully sure that he said it. ‘You’re lying.’

‘She didn’t tell you?’ Dai Lin gave him a look. It was an amused, pitying thing. A smile turned down at the corners. The way one might look at a stupid child. ‘Really, Red,’ he said. ‘The night shift at a fuel station? Really. You could have come up with better.’

‘They offered me a job. I turned it down.’ He said it, now, like he couldn’t believe he’d done it. Like, now, he was trying to imagine what had driven him to carry this whole charade. And he remembered that it had been his mother, and he felt that awful sensation of wondering if it had been worth it.

Dai Lin put the glass down. Moved around the counter so he was standing in front of Guan Shan. He put his hands on his Guan Shan’s shoulders, and they felt so heavy.

‘You turned it down,’ he said, dark, hooded eyes boring straight into his own, ‘because you already know where you belong. What you’re good at. This could be huge, Red. And I’m sharing it with you. I think you can lead this crew someplace _good_.’

‘I—’

‘Don’t make me lose that confidence in you. Don’t disappoint me, Red. I _hate_ it when people disappoint me.’

And Guan Shan nodded. What else could he do? Because Dai Lin had never really given him a chance here. Guan Shan was stupid to have thought that he would listen to him, to think that this conversation was going to turn out some way other than how it did. And he was stupid to think that Dai Lin wouldn’t mention his ma, stupid that he couldn’t tell whether or not Dai Lin was lying, stupid because he still couldn’t take that kind of risk. ‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there.’

Dai Lin nodded too. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, you will.’

* * *

His ma didn’t go to book club because it was the first night she hadn’t been on her drugs, and Guan Shan couldn’t believe it was only, really, just over a month that everything started it’s slow descent downwards.

He couldn’t believe he’d made the choices he had, had _done_ the things he had, in such a short space of time. It made the whole thing look childish. Impulsive. Made it all seem typical and stupid and _weak_.

He knew he was weak.

Which was why he probably knocked on his ma’s door.

She was in bed, dressed in pyjamas and an old grey dressing gown that used to be white and layered in blankets – Guan Shan’s blankets, because she thought he had been staying at He Tian’s most nights. At least, that’s what he’d been telling her. She was sitting up in bed, propped up by pillows covered in faded floral cases, pinks and yellows and greens that had probably once been fashionable, and she was lit up by the pale yellow glow from the bedside lamp. There was a book in her lap.

‘You’re awake late,’ Guan Shan said, standing in the doorway.

‘I think I’ve probably slept enough,’ she said, wearing a smile that was fond and Guan Shan didn’t deserve.

He waited there, not sure what for, and his ma was giving him a slightly bemused, quizzical, _expectant_ look. And then eventually she closed her book, shifted over with her thin arms trembling a little – had to move her legs across – and then she patted the space beside her.

‘Come here,’ she said.

He didn’t know why, but he was crying before he even lay down, before he could even curl up against her side, and she was stroking his hair, and telling him everything was okay, and he had never felt so lost at hearing his mother saying that and _not knowing if it was true._

‘I’m fucking up, Ma,’ he whispered. ‘I’m fucking up so bad.’

And she said, ‘Oh god,’ and then, ‘You can mess up and not be messed up, Guan Shan. It’s okay. _You’ll be okay_.’

And when Guan Shan told her that he was so _lost_ and that he didn’t think he’d ever been so fucking _low_ , she didn’t ask for context. He’d wonder later if that was because it was easier for her, or because she thought it was easier for him – and she ran her fingers through his hair and down the back of his neck and put a hand on his back because he was shaking and sobbing and he could hear the awful _sounds_ he was making – was that really coming from him? – and he was in pain he was _in pain_ and his ma’s grey dressing gown had black splotches because was crying into it and clinging onto it and hadn’t realised that she was crying too.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ she said. There was something desperate in her voice. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

He choked and said, ‘I don’t know what to _do_.’

And she rubbed beneath her eyes and said, ‘You’ll do what’s right. You always do what’s right.’

But he didn’t even ask – couldn’t form anything coherent after a while; didn’t have the energy or the voice – if doing _right_ meant you had to end up dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150741645419/aphorism-xxxi-a-19-days-fanfic


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150905760649/aphorism-xxxii-a-19-days-fanfic

The café was something out of the Western art deco era: lacquered tables, dark glossed flooring, panelled golden ceiling lights, slow rotating fans, a heady haze of smoke that cloaked the whole place, studded chairs, curved window frames, the glass coloured and painted with figures of women and men and a picturesque version of nature, stained in a way that must have been pretty in the day. 

Jazz and old blues records played quietly from speakers on the walls that sounded like it came from a record player, or like some bejewelled, beaded woman, with a cigarette in one hand and a champagne flute in the other, stood on a stage in the low light.

Everything was dark and glowing gold and smokey, and it was cold because Ah Lam had cracked open one of the windows, and the early December air was bitter as it made its presence, sleet and hail falling against the windows, onto the streets outside, but Guan Shan was sweating.

Lights from the cars outside passed, and every flash of headlights, every slow turn of wheels made him feel sick. What if He Tian had never gotten the tip-off he’d sent in? What if He Tian had never sent for back-up? Shouldn’t the Triad group they were meeting have been there by now?

‘Chill out,’ Yuan Jung muttered to him, not, tonight, looking so petulant. ‘You’re making me fucking nervous.’

Dai Lin pushed a cup of coffee that smelled rich and dark towards him. He was smoking, too – never used to much. Guan Shan supposed even he got nervous sometimes, watched as the smoke crept from his mouth and his nose and didn’t add something to him that Guan Shan liked. Not like he did with He Tian. That faint smell of mint and tobacco replaced instead by something harder and burning that felt like his lungs would seize up if he breathed in too deeply.

Guan Shan drank the coffee, let it slide thick and cloying down his throat. It was bitter and made him feel _live_ , but he thought afterwards, fingers tapping into his thighs, eyes darting around the café – to the old record player, to the windows and the creep of headlights, to the singular waitress that stood behind the counter and didn’t look at any of them until they called her over – that he’d probably rather the quiet heaviness of nerves. Not this sharp alertness that made him wonder if it had only been coffee.

They’d hired the whole place out for the night, and it was eleven o’clock and past the opening hours, and Guan Shan swallowed when he checked the time on his phone again and saw that whoever it was that they were meeting were already twenty minutes late.

‘It’s fine,’ Dai Lin said for the fourth time. ‘It’s fine. They probably just like keeping people waiting.’

‘Are we going to sit here all night for them like sweating pigs?’ Ah Lam said. She was frowning – hadn’t, actually, stopped frowning all night. She hadn’t been vocal in her rejection of this whole plan, but she didn’t need to be. Guan Shan wasn’t sure if any of them liked this whole _thing_.

‘It could be a test,’ Yuan Jung said.

‘It’s not a fucking movie,’ Guan Shan muttered. ‘Stop making it all so fucking theatrical.’

‘Tell that to him,’ he said, jerking a thumb at Dai Lin. Dai Lin was unwrapping the cellophane off another cigarette packet. He’d bought it from an old vending machine beneath the glowing bathroom sign.

Guan Shan watched him do it. Watched the plastic wrapping fall onto the floor; watched the slight shaking of his fingers as he tugged open the cardboard box, wrenched another cigarette from the packet, nervous in a way that was small and minute and that no one would have really noticed if it all hadn’t been so fucking obvious.

Guan Shan shook his head. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, pushing to his feet.

Stopped.

Dai Lin’s hand was wrapped around his wrist, squeezing, snatching. He wasn’t looking at him.

‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ Guan Shan told him. ‘Or do I need to ask permission now?’

Dai Lin gritted his teeth as he lit up. ‘Be quick.’

He took his time. Didn’t even need to take a piss. He leant his hip against the sink, folded his arms, caught his reflection in the mirror. Eyes bruised, skin pale and hollow across his cheeks. He looked harrowed. Looked like he hadn’t eaten in two days – he hadn’t – or slept in more – he hadn’t. He felt weirdly blissful, moved like he was wading through water, like he was walking through a dream where he didn’t really – _couldn’t_ really get anywhere far enough away from the shadowed creatures snapping at his ankles.

He washed his hands. The soap smelled of cinnamon sticks and cardamom and made him feel nauseous and too aware that it nearly Christmas. Aware, too, that he had promised He Tian he would move in this month. That he had promised a lot of things to him that probably didn’t involve getting shot by someone from the Triad or someone from He Tian’s brother’s company. He’d never been very good at keeping promises. Particularly not now while he felt he should be wired up to an IV drip.

He thought for a while about slinking out the fire exit. Maybe about trying to fit through the cracked window in the bathroom. Wondered how far he’d get before someone found him and broke his kneecaps.

Instead he headed back out into the café, empty but for the few tables filled with Dai Lin’s crew. Most were smoking, drinking coffee, eating cakes with dainty forks that the waitress had brought out. The quiet was weird, like they realising where they were, what they looked like, aware that it seemed like they were at the café just because they all wanted to be – not because it had a _purpose_.

‘Anything?’

‘No,’ Dai Lin told him as he sat back into the chair, feeling shaky and cold. Dai Lin had his phone in his hand, staring at it like he was waiting for something. Like if he stared harder he’d get something.

‘How long do we wait?’

‘Do I look like I have a fucking textbook guide for this?’

Guan Shan felt himself shrug. ‘It’s your call.’

‘Maybe they changed their minds,’ Yuan Jung said.

It was possible. And they dwelled on that possibility while, outside, cars passed and slowed and came to a stop, pulled up outside the café.  

And Dai Lin rose to his feet like he couldn’t help it.

‘Fuck,’ he said. And for a while they all sat there, still, and the music was so quiet but still loud, and the headlights on the cars stayed on for five minutes before they flicked off. It was too dark outside and too light inside to see anything, but Guan Shan felt, so distinctly, that they were being watched.

‘They’re here,’ Dai Lin said, dragged the sleeve of his suit jacket across his forehead. ‘They came.’

And Guan Shan thought he was going to be sick.

Because for a second there was silence, some thick and impenetrable that followed the slam of car doors.

And then blue lights.

And then sirens.

Shouting, and smashed glass, and gunshots.

* * *

He Tian glared at his phone when it started ringing, because it was a Friday, and because he wanted nothing more than to eat takeout and get drunk and watch a box set of something mildly amusing with episodes he could let run into each other and it wouldn’t matter if he missed three or four. Sleet and hail stones were hammering against the windows of his apartment, lights blurring below in a bokeh.

His phone was vibrating along the glass coffee table, clattering against it hard enough that he thought it might crack.

He thought it might be Guan Shan, felt that heart-skip moment because He Tian had given him the week. Had given him what felt like a year – no texts, no flowers on the doorstep for his mother. Mornings alone, crap food eaten alone. He hated the thought – was _so_ _scared_ of the thought that things might go back to how they use to be. A solitary view across the city with no body, sleep-mussed, in his bed. No sounds of the fridge door opening, the shower running. No knowledge that this was a space he _shared_. That there was someone else. That he wasn’t alone.

And, no, it wasn’t that it was just _someone_. Wasn’t just that it was a warm person.

Of all people, it happened to be Guan Shan. Of all people, the last few weeks made him realise how fucking in love with him he was.  

But the caller ID wasn’t Guan Shan’s. And he thought, sort of distantly, that of course it wasn’t.

The number was local, if unfamiliar, and he growled into the receiver.

‘Who is this?’

‘He Tian, it’s Jan Xiu.’

He Tian paused. ‘It’s not office hours. I don’t fucking  _appreciate_ you calling me right now, Jan Xiu.’

‘Look, it’s not what you think it is. Do you have a laptop or tablet?’

‘Both.’

‘Grab the nearest one. I need you to log onto the servers.’

‘It’s the fucking weekend, Jan Xiu,’ He Tian said, but he was already up and wandering over to the island counter in the kitchen where his laptop sat idle. He waited for it to fire up. Would have said he did it patiently but his fingers were tapping against the counter and for some reason his heart had spiked and he hadn’t even uncapped his beer bottle. Something in Jan Xiu’s voice had sounded… _off_.

‘Are you on?’

‘Nearly,’ He Tian said. He entered his password and then navigated to the company servers via a desktop client app. ‘What now?’ _What’s going on?_

‘Go to the camera we set up in the café for the raid.’

‘That’s tonight?’ He Tian said, blinking, scrolling through the list of recently added cameras. He hadn’t even remembered. Remembered the email that had blinked through on his computer a week or so before. The email address was a temporary thing, the IP address located to an internet café in the city. They could have found the sender if they’d wanted to, but did it matter? They had a time; a place. What did it matter who it came from? ‘No one mentioned it,’ He Tian said. He’d almost doubted that the company were even going to make a move on it.

‘That’s because your brother made me keep quiet.’

He Tian’s fingers paused over the touch pad. ‘What?’

‘Just go to the camera, He Tian…’

‘Whatever,’ He Tian muttered. Finally he found the camera, labelled with a mix of letters and numbers that wouldn’t make sense to anyone who wasn’t looking for it. He opened it up. Blinked. Leaned in.

‘Holy fuck,’ he said.

‘It’s a shit storm, He Tian.’

‘Yeah, I see that.’

It was a greyscale blur of movement, the video frames hurrying to catch up with themselves. Really, the video was nothing more than a precaution, a back-up, nothing high-tech. There were flashes of white from gunshot, and He Tian was grateful the camera didn’t have audio.

There were bodies on the floor – some from the company, some who must have been the gang members. The mirrors behind the counter were smashed and the counter display cases were all shattered and spraying shards across the room. There were jerky movements that looked like stabbing and bones breaking and this was not, apparently, an easy arrest. It was like watching some poorly made 1920’s mafia movie. Except that it was real, and he thought he could see bloodstains blooming.

‘They’re all gang members,’ He Tian noticed, heart hammering. There weren’t half as many as there should have been, but they were mostly tattooed and weren’t dressed quite right. Where was the group from the Triad?

‘Maybe the group decided not to show. Maybe they caught wind. But that’s not important.’

‘It’s not?’ He Tian said, because he thought that was pretty fucking important.

‘The video’s not in colour,’ Jan Xiu said.

‘Right,’ He Tian said.

‘You haven’t seen it.’

‘Seen what?’

‘Look through the faces.’

He Tian gritted his teeth, feeling something in him start to slowly sink, because he was _really_ starting to hate the way Jan Xiu was talking to him. Like he was being _slow_. Hated that he was talking him through all of this like he was waiting for him to spot something and wouldn’t just tell him what it was.

‘Have you seen it?’

He Tian ran a hand through his hair, eyes still roaming the screen that was distorting in front of his eyes, said, ‘What am I… even… what…’

And he felt his stomach drop out.

Because he got _why_ he was talking about colour.

He hadn’t seen the red hair.

He felt, for a minute, like his word had split in two.

And it sounded like a whimper when he whispered, ‘Guan Shan.’

* * *

It wasn’t that he was having difficulty with seeing any of what was happening, it was that he was having difficulty, for a moment, in making sense of it.

Because there was a lot of red. A lot of it. And he thought that he should probably be covered in it like he usually would but this time he couldn’t move.

Perhaps chaos was this muted thing, like watching everything from inside a fishbowl, where faces and movement was distorted and thinking – speaking – moving felt like wading through an ocean, struggling to keep one’s toes on the sand bed of an ocean floor.

He thought that maybe there was a ringing in his ears, because the guns were louder than he thought they would be. And, really, he hadn’t factored in the guns at all. Hadn’t thought that perhaps this might be what it was like. Had thought maybe there would be arrests. Questioning. Interrogation. Climbing handcuffed into the back of black vans owned by the MSS. Hadn’t considered that Dai Lin and the crew wouldn’t go quietly. Of course they fucking wouldn’t.

Later – he wouldn’t be able to say how – he crept through the door to staircase that led to the staff floor. Must have tripped at some point because his knees were already bruised and there was a swelling lump on his jaw; must have been caught by the spray of glass because there were flecks of red, littered across his shirt like Christmas glitter.

He remembered leaning against the wall, a long, unlit hallway that branched off into offices and rooms, remembered the way his breathing was sharp and hoarse in his throat and _this was not the time_ and he realised that he was having a panic attack, scrabbling for purchase on something to hold, doubled over at the waist, eyes swimming with spots of light and dark and more dark than light and he was remembering, in painful increments that felt like his lungs were collapsing and his skin was aching, that he needed to _breathe._

Sucked in oxygen like he was drowning – too much, too fast, so loud. Glass shattering and shouting and groaning and gunfire below not even matching the way it sounded when he tried to fill his lungs. Hairs on his arms pulling away like he skin was ready to peel off from his flesh.

What had he thought this would be? How had he thought it would turn out?

He supposed, really, that when Dai Lin gave him no option but to be there he thought he’d just die. Supposed that he wouldn’t have the time to really think about it. Wouldn’t have the time to run like he always did. Would have to face the long, drawn out process of it all. Wait until the masked men came and maybe shot him while his hands were up, while he lay on the floor, boot in the small of his back. Told them his ma needed him and was waiting for him; told them he hadn’t meant to and he was the one who told them; would never say He Tian’s name because what would that mean for He Tian and how _painful_ the whole thing was when he thought about it now. 

Thought about what He Tian would think later. Thought about the reality that, probably, he wouldn’t see him again. Would end up exactly like everyone thought he would: some variation of being shot; drowned in the river; choking on his own vomit from an overdose; beaten up and ruined behind the bars of a cell because he had a look in his eyes that was asking for it.

But, miraculously, none of this happened. And he could breathe eventually. Normally. Didn’t have to think about it. But he was shaking and the sounds from beneath him were making it difficult to move because they hadn’t quietened for a minute and he thought they might be getting louder.

And then, out the corner of his eye, hands pressed on his thighs as he leaned over, he saw a pair of shoes. Saw the black arm. Looked up through sweat-soaked hair that was hanging in front of his eyes.

For a moment, things seem to go quiet. They weren’t, of course.

He supposed this was another way it could and all would happen. Was going to happen, because it was glinting.

‘Dai Lin,’ Guan Shan said.

‘You fucked me over again, Red,’ Dai Lin was saying. Heaving. ‘You fucked me over. Again.’

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘I didn’t tell anyone but you.’

‘The Triad didn’t come. It must have been then.’

‘No,’ Dai Lin said. ‘No, it wasn’t them.’

It was then that Guan Shan saw the bullet in Dai Lin’s stomach, the blood stain that was creeping its way across a crisp, white shirt, like the blooming of a poppy. He saw the sweat on Dai Lin’s face. Saw the grimace marked with pain behind the anger, the gritted teeth, the narrowed eyes, the flaring nostrils.

‘Sorry,’ Dai Lin said, stepping forward.

It sank into him easily, like cutting into dough.

Maybe it was the adrenaline, but he didn’t really notice it for a few moments. Just felt a kind of parting. A kind of pressure, like having a tooth pulled out under anaesthestic.

And then Dai Lin twisted, pulled it out, and Guan Shan’s eyes rolled back in his head.

White flames.

Apparently it was possible to feel that kind of thing.

He threw up coffee and stomach acid onto the floor.

Dai Lin didn’t stand much longer. Fell to his knees after that, looked proud like he’d achieved something, a kid giving a scribbled drawing to a parent. Made a kind of shuddering movement as he curled on the floor, grinning like the grimace of a skull.

And Guan Shan turned slowly away from him, a staggering, stumbling thing, not sure where he was supposed to be going. The hallway went on longer; he could hear footstep close to the stairs below, heavy, booted things, guns clattering, so he clutched to the wall, didn’t realise that he was smearing red across the wallpaper as he moved. 

He heard himself telling He Tian about what a mess he used to make of things, how much red he got everywhere. Thought about how no matter how many times he asked Dai Lin just to call him Guan Shan, he was still Red. Had never left the name. Maybe, had never wanted to.

* * *

> **Song change:** _[Not Going Back to the Harbour by Lanterns on the Lake](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fyoutubeonrepeat.com%2Fwatch%2F%3Fv%3DEz2f9bY60KI&t=ZGY0MjQ2MmVlMTJiMDc5ZGNiYTk3Yzk4MzUwNzhlNTE4MDkwNDcyYyxWZm9RQjFkSg%3D%3D&b=t%3AjJea3L-GQY6gTMS4LcZBVw&m=1) _

The city had never felt slower, and he had never been so scared.

Wonderful, he thought distantly, that he should be scared because of something he couldn’t control. And maybe that was the idea. That you were scared of things because you couldn’t fucking _do anything and_ —

‘How long?’

‘Five minutes. We’ll get there. Most of them are subdued now and—’

‘Show me Guan Shan.’

Jan Xiu turned the tablet around to face him. The driver was taking backstreets with jerky turns of the wheel and too heavy braking but He Tian didn’t fucking care how many times he hit his head into the car windows he just wanted to _be there_.

‘I don’t see him,’ he said, eyes roaming the screen, voice kind of strangled. ‘I don’t _see him_.’

‘He’ll be there somewhere. They don’t let them go. They’re… thorough.’

He grimaced, like he knew it was a bad choice of words, but He Tian wasn’t even listening.

‘There’s an upstairs?’

‘According to the blueprints, it’s where the staff room and some storage rooms are.’

‘No camera?’

‘It was unnecessary.’

‘Well it’s fucking necessary now that I can’t fucking see him.’

Jan Xiu swallowed, looked down, and later He Tian would be grateful. That he was here, in a suit that was barely rumpled and belied the bags under his eyes and the dark, dyed-brown hair that fell into his face because he hadn’t gelled it and He Tian, later, might tell him that he looked better like that.

But it was difficult to be grateful now. Difficult when it felt like his stomach was about to come out through his mouth and his hands were shaking so goddamned much and he needed a cigarette.

‘He’ll be okay.’

‘Don’t promise me that,’ He Tian said, shaking his head against the car window. Restaurants and shops were blurring past him in streaks of light, the snow drops melting and capturing the lights in tiny bubbles of water on the windows like each one held a part of the world.

He wanted to close his eyes.

And Jan Xiu said, ‘I can’t promise you anything.’

* * *

It was a while before he recognised where he was, slumped against the curve of a wall at the end of the hall. Across from him there was a window, streaked with sleet that was turning to icy snow as the night grew colder and darker into midnight and the early hours of another day – which date would he have on his death certificate? – and he thought how pretty the city looked for once.

He looked down at himself, felt like he was drunk, saw the red.

He groaned, a quiet, regretful thing, whispered, ‘ _Fuck.._.’

It was full of so much error. Full of so much realisation. That numbing feeling of being high or drunk and stepping on a glass bottle. Of watching something light on fire – a piece of cloth, a house – and knowing it would burn until the whole thing was ash. Of knowing, probably that this was it.

This was as good as it got.

This was as good as he could give, and it probably hadn’t been enough.

And if he twisted his neck around the wall, down the hallway, he thought he could make out a dark lump of a shape that might have been Dai Lin’s body. Thought that if it was brighter, once dawn came, that he would see the blood seeping around him like someone had knocked over a tea pot. Looked at it and thought how tragic the whole thing was, that he would die alone in an empty hallway with a snow-spattered window and a dead body for company, slumped up against a wall until someone thought to look upstairs.

 _At least I’ve got the city lights for company_ , he thought.

It hurt too much to press now, and really the pressure was a futile thing from the beginning, because he’d been bleeding too long, and Dai Lin had known how to use a knife.

Each blink of his eyes, slow brush of his lashes, seemed slower than the last, until eventually he couldn’t remember when he’d last opened his eyes. Until he could actually hear the low whistling sound of his own breathing.

And he must have been gone a while, nearly there, when he felt hands on him.

‘He’s with me, he’s with me,’ he heard someone saying. Wasn’t a voice he recognised. Wasn’t sure he would recognise it even lucid.

And there was a face in front of him, skin and dark hair, flushed red, lit up from the lights beyond the window.

‘You idiot,’ they were saying. ‘You fucking idiot.’

They were pressing on his stomach, and he heard someone scream. Realised it was him. Felt like he should put his hands up and apologise for the noise.

‘I’m sorry,’ they said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

And Guan Shan shook his head. Was aware of his skull rolling against the wall, this grinding sound of it. ‘’M sorry,’ he said. Mouth not really _working right._ ‘Not your faul’.’

But they just kept apologising.

And Guan Shan said, ‘I fu’ed up, Tian. Rea’ey _bad_.’ Knew, now, that it was He Tian. Even if he sort of hadn’t registered it. Hadn’t quite thought it was real; hadn’t felt some gleeful realisation probably because he thought that it was too late. Knew it was him, though, because there was only one person who would call him an idiot at a time like this. Only one person who would inflict so much _pain_ on him just to try and make things better.

‘Shhh. Don’t talk.’ Louder: ‘ _Where’s the fucking paramedics, Jan Xiu_?’

‘I go’ _stabbed_ , Tian,’ Guan Shan told him when he stopped shouting at someone. Secret-whisper quiet. Indulgent.

‘You _think_?’ He Tian said, turning back to him, eyes wide, like had he really just looked away from him for more than a second? And his face was paler than Guan Shan had ever seen it but maybe it was the light. ‘You fucking idiot,’ Guan Shan heard him say again, bent down on one knee, forehead pressed into an arm so he seemed to echo the repose of a tormented Greek statue. ‘How could you fucking do this to me.’

‘’M sorry,’ Guan Shan said. He reached out an arm, didn’t realise he was doing it until he streaked a red line across He Tian’s forehead, fingertips glistening. He realised his lips were wet and his mouth tasted of copper and it was getting hard to breathe. ‘Thought I… Thought I was doing okay—’

‘Stop talking. Just—just don’t talk, all right?’

He Tian had his hand on his forehead, and it felt cold, so Guan Shan realised his skin must have been hot and clammy with sweat, and the look on He Tian’s face made him want to cry, but tears were just leaking instead because it hurt so much and he couldn’t let himself sob because that would hurt too.

‘ _Don’ wan’ to die_ ,’ he whispered, squeezed his eyes as pain bloomed in his stomach like a hot searing iron stamping a message on the underside of his skin. How stupid, he thought, that he’d once thought he knew what pain felt like.

‘You’re not going to die,’ He Tian said, teeth gritted. His hands kept flitting over him like he wasn’t sure where to put them. ‘You’re not fucking dying, all right? We haven’t done half the fucking things I wanted to.’

And Guan Shan wanted to ask him what they were, and some part of him that was finding things vaguely hilarious – was that the shock? did that mean it was nearly over? – thought that most of them were probably about sex. Thought about how ridiculous it was that in his darkest, lowest points, He Tian was there. With him.

But he didn’t ask. And things happened quickly then: there was more movement, more hands pressing into him, more screaming – again, that was from him, but this time he didn’t realise – and it faded into something quiet and hushed, because things had lost a kind of permanence. And He Tian’s voice which had been so obvious to him, so distinctive, eventually lost its place too.

But someone told him he was okay, was going to be okay, and he thought that the light behind his eyelids was changing colour, and when he felt something _go,_ he’d wanted only to believe that they were right because the pain was sort of – fading now and something was – heavy in his palm – a hand? – and he thought, now—that it was time—to just—

Float.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/150905760649/aphorism-xxxii-a-19-days-fanfic


	34. Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/151162278224/aphorism-xxxiii-part-i-a-19-days-fanfic

He Tian spent Christmas morning in Guan Shan’s apartment. It was as cold as he remembered. As empty. As utterly disheartening, and he couldn’t try to imagine growing up there. He wondered how it would have changed him. Wondered if he’d be different. Wondered if he would have been more like Guan Shan had always been.

His knees started aching after the first hour; old floorboards rubbing against the skin of his knee caps, and his hands were getting shrivelled from the soapy bucket of water.

He could have asked someone else to do it. Could have paid someone else to do it, but there was something cathartic about it; stripping down the cupboards until they were empty husks. _Emptier_ husks; there hadn’t been much to claim here anyway.

The floorboards don’t shine; that seemed impossible. But everything smelled faintly of citrus and disinfectant, and it meant the place would sell for more. Meant Guan Shan’s mother would have something more to her name.

He’d painted the walls the week before, white and magnolia neutrals. And it was almost brighter. He paid someone to come and fix the hinges on the windows. To put a proper lock on the door. It wouldn’t be fixed until after the holidays, but there was nothing to take anyway.

He threw most things away: the old TV inches thick, the collapsed bookshelf that had gathered dust, the books that hadn’t been read, pages stained yellow, dust layering the surface. He knew that some of it must have been sentimental, even if he’d never cared for most of it, because people did that – kept things they didn’t need. Somehow, He Tian had never imagined Guan Shan like that. But he’d always surprised him, hadn’t he? Always did the _kind of_ unexpected. Always did what others hadn’t. Which meant, most of the time, that he’d understood him. Almost.

He thought Guan Shan’s mother’s room would take the longest, but the clothes didn’t take long to pack, and once the sheets were thrown away and the windows were opened the room, almost, dared to look big. Light. Almost.

It was Guan Shan’s room that took the longest, and he should have expected it. And it was when he was reaching beneath his bed and throwing things into a bag without _looking_ because he didn’t want to _look_ that he knew there was a lump in his throat and his cheeks were kind of wet and he hadn’t _wanted_ this.

This wasn’t how he’d _wanted_ it. Had wanted them to be here together so that Guan Shan could laugh through every photo they found; every old souvenir that he’d kept from when he was a kid and forgotten about it. And He Tian would have teased him. Teased him now as he pulled out the album of Pokémon cards, worn and yellowing in their plastic wallets.

‘You nerd,’ He Tian muttered. Sniffed. Laughed at himself because he’d always wanted to do the same but he’d been buying cigarettes before he bought trading cards and so it built up an impression – an image of himself for the fucking _newsagent_.

And he thought now how fucking ridiculous it was. That he cared what some nonentity did. That he cared what someone did, someone who just fucking sold things to him like they did to every thousand other people in He Tian’s neighbourhood.

How he cared what someone _thought_ about him, spent so much goddamn time and effort being a certain type of person – so many different types of people – to random, inconsequential individuals in his life, when the only one he’d wanted to care about him was Guan Shan.

Guan Shan hadn’t had much. A gaming console on the desk, a TV that only showed three channels because apparently he’d never bought a TV box with it. The third drawer in his chest of drawers got stuck halfway open, and the mirror in the wardrobe had stickers all over it. Brand labels; cartoon characters; some grim quotes that He Tian thought Guan Shan must have added in his anarchic teenage phase. 

He had to use mayonnaise to get them off, because they were almost soldered to the glass, and most of the clothes in there he put in charity bags because he’d never seen Guan Shan wear them. Maybe things his mother had bought him for birthdays and Christmas. Maybe things he’d bought out of impulse because for a little while he’d had some money, but when he looked at them, looked at the receipts, nothing about it was appealing anymore.

He Tian didn’t, really, know if that was true, and maybe he shouldn’t have done it, but Guan Shan’s mother wouldn’t be able to and there was something cathartic about the whole thing really. A kind of…

No.

Fuck.

No.

Didn’t want to call it closure.

That, really, was fucking _bullshit._ That wasn’t what it _was_. Couldn’t be. That meant something else.

That’s what Zhan Zhengxi had called it, made him want to swing a fist before Jian Yi got between then and told them both to calm the fuck down because it wasn’t anyone’s fault.

Wasn’t anyone’s _fault_. Not Guan Shan’s. Not He Tian’s. Only, really, the tattooed man they’d found dead in the hallway from a bullet wound and who, even now, He Tian couldn’t find himself wanting to blame.

It would have been easy to. _God_ it would have been so _easy_.

But even easy was energy and He Tian didn’t think he had it.

Thought the only thing he could do right now was act on some sort of autopilot, something that didn’t need thinking about.

Was probably why it was so easy to throw things away that weren’t his because he couldn’t care about it too much or it would hurt. Too much.

He’d had enough eventually. He could hear a choir making the rounds outside the door, and he wasn’t sure there was anything he could _give_ them right now. He ticked off what he’d done – managed to do – on his phone (there wasn’t much left), threw the rubbish bags down the chute, the heavy sound of thudding and glass breaking echoing down the metal, and left the bags for the charity shops outside the front door for the volunteer collectors or nosy, dubiously moral neighbours.

The rest of Guan Shan’s mother’s things – Guan Shan’s things – he left in boxes in the flat to pick up another day, because he hadn’t driven. Didn’t want to carry them on the train, really.

And the metro itself was a quiet, solemn affair, most looking drunk and tired or hungover or tired. Someone in a Father Christmas suit was playing a saxophone and kept messing up the notes every time the train swayed or took a harsh turn, every time it came to a lurching stop. He Tian gave him a few notes he had in his coat pocket, collars turned upwards, scarf tucked in against the cold, because it hadn’t been easy cleaning out the place, cheeks getting flushed from exertion, but as soon as he stopped the coldness started to creep into his bones, made his fingers ache, made his lips chilled. He was, sort of, surprised that he could feel it. Felt otherwise kind of numb.

The train lurched to a stop eventually, and he wandered out with a bustle of other people onto the platform, up concrete stairs that already smelled of piss and spilled beer and roasting chestnuts from the vendor outside the station. The walk to the block didn’t take long, suede shoes soaked from the snow and ice on the gritty, salted paths.

He was wearing a shirt and tie and his coat had cost more than it was worth and he thought that maybe he still listened to his father because he still dressed ‘properly’ like he told him to. His mother had left a message on his voicemail last week, asking him what time he’d be at the house. What time dinner would be on the table and he hoped she’d caught onto the silence. Hope she’d gathered that no response was as good as saying ‘no’.

And he’d feel guilty later. He’d regret it. And one day he’d regret all the skipped family dinners and the ignored phone calls and the estranged silences that were nothing to do with his mother and all to do with him and his father, his mother caught somewhere between them. His brother lingering on the periphery.

His brother.

He Tian gritted his teeth, kept walking.

He bought a box of mince pies in a small, international shop on the way to his apartment that a British student had once bought into class in high school. He’d liked the spices in them but he remembered the way Guan Shan’s eyes had kind of lit up as it crumbled in his mouth. There was another choir in the street, people dressed up in elf outfits, jumping about more out of the chill of the cold than any legitimate enthusiasm, and He Tian watched them for a while, found the whole charade to be some bizarre curiosity, before he wandered back up to the street to his apartment block.

The doorman smiled, tipped his hat, asked how he was, wished him a Merry Christmas, and He Tian thought he might have said, ‘Yeah,’ but he wasn’t sure and the elevator was playing some classical rendition of Jingle Bell Rock and already he was feeling nervous and kind of sick and then it dinged and he unlocked his door and then.

Yeah.

He was still there.

But his eyes were open.

And he offered him something like a smile, and He Tian thought his heart might fall out because for three weeks he thought he might not get to see that again; thought that he had never seen enough of it.

He said, weak, hoarse, ‘Hi.’

And, ‘You’re awake,’ He Tian said. Numb.

‘Yeah. Just.. Just in time, right?’ He said this nervously. Trying to pull himself up in the bed, wincing, and He Tian couldn’t remember moving but suddenly he was next to him and he had an arm around him and he was touching him and he was _alive_.

‘You’re warm,’ He Tian said, like he couldn’t believe it.

‘You’re weird.’

And He Tian laughed. ‘Yeah,’ he said. And then, ‘Fuck.’

‘Yeah.’

He Tian stood, swallowed, smoothed down the front of his coat, running over the buttons.

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘Please,’ Guan Shan said, voice rough with disuse.

And He Tian didn’t remember going to the kitchen either, grabbing a glass of water and a straw and – ‘A straw? I’m not a fucking invalid, He Tian,’ and ‘Yeah, you fucking are now shut the fuck up,’ but _please keep talking so I can hear your voice and pretend like, for a moment, it wasn’t like I’d never hear it again._

‘Three weeks,’ Guan Shan said, once he’d emptied the glass and He Tian went to fill it again.

‘Three weeks,’ He Tian said. ‘Felt like ten years.’

‘Why am I here?’

He Tian’s heart kind of… _twisted_. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, slow, voice thick, hidden behind the hush of running water, face hidden as he turned towards the sink. ‘I thought you’d – I thought it would be easier if you— I thought you’d want to be—’

‘That’s not what I meant. I meant why am I not in hospital?’

And, slowly, his heart started beating normally again, because it wasn’t that Guan Shan didn’t _want him_. Wasn’t that he’d woken up and realised that this wasn’t what he wanted anymore. He was asking because he was being practical, and god He Tian was _not_ being _practical_ right now.

He gave Guan Shan the glass, saw that his hand was shaking and shoved it in his coat pocket.

‘My brother’s company… They thought it best if you weren’t around for police questioning,’ he explained. ‘We moved you after surgery and had a doctor stay here for a couple of days. You were hooked up to a monitor and an IV until last week.’

He Tian remembered the wires and the tubes and how his home had smelled of a hospital for a while, and he’d had to sleep on the pull-out sofa bed because the spare bedrooms were too far away down the hall but he knew that if he slept with him he’d touch him in his sleep and pull something out or make him hurt and that was worse.

‘They put me in a coma?’ Guan Shan said.

‘Until a couple of days ago. Said you’d wake up by yourself eventually.’

He’d finished the second glass, and let it rest on the bed side table. ‘Fuck,’ he said.

And He Tian said, ‘Yeah.’

He Tian looked at him, let himself wonder at the image of him whole and healthy and alive and here and warm. Even if his eyes looked bruised and his skin was too pale and his lips were cracked but He Tian had run ice over them every day and he looked so _thin_.

Guan Shan said, ‘I look like shit, huh?’

He Tian’s eyes fell back to his, and they were so _bright,_ and He Tian could feel himself getting lost in the sight of him.

‘Not at all,’ he said, still looking at him, wanting, almost, to touch him just to check that this wasn’t a dream because he’d _had_ this dream already, and had woken up in a dark apartment lit by the glow of a life support monitor letting out a steady beep, whose line he couldn’t stop watching. So scared that it would dip down and flatline and he’d be gone.

Guan Shan, eventually, sighed. ‘You can say I told you so,’ he said, looking at his hands, nails getting long, fingers thin, blue veins through his hands so stark. ‘Tell me I fucked up. Tell me I—I did everything wrong.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘I want to say I’m sorry but I don’t know how.’

‘You terrified me,’ He Tian told him. Swallowed. ‘I was—I was _distraught_.’

‘I know.’

‘No,’ He Tian said, and it sounded harsh but he wouldn’t realise this until later. ‘No, you don’t know. Because you weren’t there. You were on a table while they tried to pump someone else’s blood into you because they didn’t understand how you were still _alive_. You were—you were in an ambulance and they had to give you CPR and hook you up to a fucking defibrillator because you’re heart stopped twice. Okay? You were in my bed like a fucking dead person for three weeks. And you were here but you weren’t _here_ , okay? You just _weren’t._ ’

‘I know.’

‘You—you’re supposed to be fucking _smart_. You’re supposed to be the one that looks at me like I’m being the fucking ridiculous one because I _am_ , because I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing half the time but I make people _think_ that I do. How the fuck am I supposed to manage if you’re—if you’re not fucking _here_?’

‘He Tian—’

‘Don’t. Please. Don’t. Because I want to hear your voice forever but I want to fucking throttle you and I can’t stop looking at you but you’re just making me so _angry._ ’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

He Tian shook his head. ‘I’m not angry with _you._ I’m angry at this whole—this whole thing. Angry that I can’t be angry with someone because that would be easy. Angry because I—because I almost lost you and I thought I’d…’ He hid his eyes behind his palm, wrapped an arm around his stomach. Didn’t want Guan Shan to see him like this now. Because it wasn’t what Guan Shan would want to see after three weeks of nothingness. Because it wasn’t the kind of person he wanted Guan Shan to think he was. And he knew, really, that this wasn’t _weakness_. But it felt like it, because he said, ‘I thought if I lost you then I’d have lost myself too.’

And it was dangerous. And co-dependent. And it was unhealthy. But he _knew_ it now. And that was okay, wasn’t it? To know it. To know that it needed changing even if you didn’t want it to change? Wasn’t that _okay_?

‘I thought I was okay,’ he said. ‘I thought I was. But I’m not. I’m really not.’

He used to think that it was weak – crying. Remembered how he’d mocked Guan Shan for it because he’d never known what pain – inward, non-physical, that wrenching, burning feeling from the inside – felt like. But now he thought he did. And it was dementing.

And when Guan Shan shifted and He Tian climbed in beside him and tried not to touch him too much, Guan Shan just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ and, ‘I know.’ And He Tian wanted to tell him he didn’t need to apologise for anything and that he didn’t know what he thought he knew but it was good enough. Just to be there, to not be cautious of the wires and the tubes, to be able to hear his breathing and not automated sound. And eventually he’d say that was fine and he was okay and he was sorry, too, and knew Guan Shan wouldn’t sleep because he’d done nothing, really, but sleep, but when He Tian felt his stinging eyes shut for the first time in three weeks and his throat stopped feeling so tight, he didn’t even dream. Didn’t need to. After all, was he not living it?

* * *

He cooked for them later.

At least, Guan Shan lay in the bed and told him what to do and He Tian tried not to touch anything unless Guan Shan told him explicitly to do so.

‘You’re kidding me,’ Guan Shan said.

‘I’ve never used it before.’

And Guan Shan sighed. ‘Hold down the button with the light above it, and then twist the furthest dial to the left.’

He heard a ticking sound, and then a whoosh, and the hob on the stove lit up with blue flame.

‘Like that?’ he said, letting go, and he couldn’t help the small, stupid smile of accomplishment.

And Guan Shan smiled back at him with a tired look that must have been fondness, and said, ‘You’re cute sometimes.’

And He Tian wasn’t blushing. He _wasn’t_ , so he turned his back to him and got the rest of the ingredients out the fridge that people cooked with on Christmas but that he’d thought he’d end up throwing out because they’d be spoiled and he wouldn’t have touched them. Would have thought that the swipe of a credit card was enough – he didn’t need to go the whole way for it to mean something.

Guan Shan told him how to make a seasoning bag for the pork belly, told him to cut the vegetables slowly or he’d cut himself and He Tian nearly told him that he knew how to use a _knife_ at least – but that was too much and he imagined the kind of pained flash across Guan Shan’s face if he would have said it.

His mother had sent him a box of sesame seed balls from some boutique bakery in Shanghai, but he gave them to Guan Shan with the mince pies and saw that both boxes were nearly empty by the time the duck was finished and He Tian was bizarrely happy about the fact. Because he was sure that being fed food through a tube would make anyone long for something solid and probably he shouldn’t be eating anything much so soon because he might be sick and that might pull at his stitches, but no matter how much he warned Guan Shan he didn’t listen. And that was no surprise.

They ate on He Tian’s bed, dishes laid out on the sheets for them to pick at while they watched _Elf_ with subtitles and Guan Shan tried not to laugh because his stomach felt tender and he wouldn’t look, later, when He Tian changed his dressings. He Tian told him it wasn’t that bad, but he had never been good at lying, so Guan Shan just gave him a _look_.

He Tian piled the used dishes in the sink and put the rest of the food in containers into the fridge because that’s what Guan Shan would have done, and by he time he was finished and the ten o’clock news had started rolling Guan Shan was asleep, propped up by pillows, head tilted forwards slightly like he was just resting his eyes.

And he didn’t wake when He Tian slowly moved the pillows and lowered him down, ran his hands through his hair and it was greasy and the roots were showing and He Tian wondered if he’d dye it again – if he wanted him to do it for him – if he wanted it red, still. And he didn’t wake when He Tian rested a hand on his side where his skin was warm and soft and he couldn’t feel the edges of the dressing there and he could pretend like it didn’t exist. 

And he didn’t wake when He Tian turned off the lights and stripped off his clothes and put the TV on low sound. It was just background noise; replaced the beeping noise he might have heard in the silence, or the sound of sirens, or the sound of Guan Shan’s sobbing, or the charge of electricity before his body jerked up in the ambulance and blood sprayed and droplets hit He Tian’s face and he’d wonder if he’d done this to him. If it was his fault that he hadn’t just looked like Jan Xiu told him to, punished to watch the whole macabre scene play out in front of him in hospital corridors. If he hadn’t been persistent enough. If he hadn’t done enough. Cared enough.

But he was warm next to him, and he was sighing in his sleep, and He Tian didn’t really care now about what he hadn’t done, or what he had, because Guan Shan’s breathing was quiet and he looked quite lovely, and quite _alive_ , and quite beautiful, and that was probably enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/151162278224/aphorism-xxxiii-part-i-a-19-days-fanfic


	35. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/151206630204/chapter-xxxiii-part-ii-a-19-days-fanfic

Christmas came to an end quite easily: simply, they slept through it.

Boxing Day, too, except for when He Tian heated up leftovers and they ate their way through two boxes of cereal and He Tian had to help Guan Shan walk to the bathroom.

On the twenty-seventh he gave him a sponge bath and washed his hair over the sink, apologised when he let his fingers ghost too closely _there_ and Guan Shan told him they _couldn’t_ in case he ripped a stitch but it was a fun idea for both of them to think about and groan about when they watched porn on He Tian’s laptop and spent the rest of the day in bed.

On the twenty-eight Guan Shan bolted up right with a cry because his wound but also his _ma_.

And He Tian… He Tian found it darkly amusing that he’d only thought of her now. Found himself indulging in the even darker thought that Guan Shan had been so caught up with him that his mother, forever his most important person, the person he had gone through everything for, had been temporarily forgotten. And He Tian did not hate himself for the thought as much as he should have.

‘She’s with Huai,’ He Tian said. ‘I told her I was taking you away for Christmas.’

‘And she was _okay_ with that?’

‘I didn’t give her a choice. It wasn’t like I wanted to do it, but I was lying to her for you.’

He Tian wasn’t blaming him for this; there was no _accusation_ , but Guan Shan sighed, leaned back against the pillows. ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘it gets easier after a while.’

He Tian watched him, lying beside him. Wondered what he was thinking; what he was feeling.

‘So,’ Guan Shan said after a while. His tone was easy, and light. ‘Where’ve we gone on our hypothetical holiday?’

‘Where do you want to go?’ He Tian said, playing along, quietly pleased with this change in conversation, because they rarely got to do this. Talk in a way that was whimsical and didn’t mean much but _could_ mean _something_ if they wanted it to. Didn’t get to talk like they were dreaming.

‘I always wanted to go to London,’ Guan Shan admitted. ‘Buckingham Palace. Big Ben. All that kind of tourist shit.’

‘Okay,’ He Tian said. ‘Where else?’

‘Rome. Athens. Amsterdam. Paris. Venice, maybe. Europe, I guess.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, yeah. Maybe. But they’re… All kind of clinging to some commercial romanticism, aren’t they? I dunno if… I want to buy into that.’

‘I think it’s probably who you’re with that makes the trip.’

‘Yeah. Probably.’ Guan Shan’s eyes flickered to his, then darted away. His face was flushed in a way that looked really very pretty. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘I don’t mind,’ He Tian said. He put his hands behind his head, let out a contented sigh. ‘I travelled with my dad a lot when I was a kid. It lost the excitement after a while, you know?’

‘Not really,’ Guan Shan said. He had that _poor little rich boy_ note in his voice.

‘What I _mean_ is that it became less about seeing things, about exploring, and more about just going through airport security and sitting in a hotel room while my father made deals in the bars downstairs, yeah? It wasn’t… Wasn’t about _seeing_ things. And when we did we had to do it from a car with blacked-out windows and I wasn’t allowed to get out the car and go into the Colosseum or anything. It was all—it was all _there_ but I couldn’t take _part_ in any of it. And I think with you it would… It would all be kind of indulgent. Wouldn’t matter where we went.’

Guan Shan was quiet, considering. Eventually, he said: ‘You’re different.’

He Tian blinked. ‘What?’

‘You. You’re… different.’

He Tian said, carefully, tentative, ‘ _Good_ different?’

‘I think so. I haven’t decided. I like it, though.’

He Tian didn’t know what to say. He wanted to say that three weeks weren’t that long but they had felt like a decade and everything had been too close, on some sort of precipice. And He Tian had kept getting glimpses down into the abyss, some wide, dark expanse that was hollow and deep enough that it had made He Tian _fear_ – fear so much, with such a kind of inescapable quality until, for a while, it had become him. And, yeah, that probably would change someone a little bit.

‘Do you think you’re the same?’ he asked Guan Shan.

And Guan Shan said, ‘I don’t know. I’m not as dynamic as you.’

‘I think you underestimate yourself,’ He Tian told him. ‘I think you adapt to things better than you think you do.’

And he wasn’t lying when he said this, because Guan Shan, sort of, reminded him of a kaleidoscope, colours and tiny jewels fitting together, until they formed patterns – or didn’t. Shifting and changing and never not _beautiful_. And he told Guan Shan this. Maybe should have said it with something like shyness or a feeling of awkwardness but he’d never really been embarrassed by much, and still wasn’t now.  

And Guan Shan laughed at him, even though it hurt a bit because everything was still pulling, and he said, ‘When did you become a fucking poet?’

* * *

On New Year’s Eve Jian Yi and Zhan Zhengxi came over because they wanted an excuse to get drunk, and because Jian Yi had kept asking how Guan Shan was and He Tian hadn’t realised that they were that close.

They brought two packs of beer and take-out food and Jian Yi could not, for a while, stop staring at Guan Shan. He was sitting on the sofa because they’d gone for a walk around the block that morning, even though it was cold and Guan Shan’s steps were nothing but shuffles but he needed air, no matter how sharp and chilled.

He Tian didn’t stop holding him until they were back and Guan Shan was covered in a thin sheen of sweat. He Tian helped him wash because he could finally shower since the doctor came and removed his bandages, the scar an angry red line that she said would fade but probably not go, and Guan Shan talked about how much he fucking _hated_ this.

‘You’ll get better,’ He Tian had told him. ‘You just need to build your strength back.’

‘Shouldn’t have to,’ Guan Shan muttered, pulling a t-shirt over his head and wincing because he’d been angry and too boisterous. ‘Shouldn’t have been so fucking stupid.’

‘What?’ he said now, because Jian Yi was sitting too close to him and frowning and Guan Shan was leaning, slightly, away.

‘How are you?’ Jian Yi said.

‘Okay,’ Guan Shan said. ‘I guess.’

‘No infection? No lasting damage? Were the doctors good enough?’

‘He’s fine, Jian Yi,’ He Tian said, putting the beers in the fridge and grabbing plates. ‘I told you.’

Guan Shan raised an eyebrow.

‘He was at the hospital during the surgery,’ Zhan said. ‘Paid for your—’

He broke off, bit his lip, looked away. His words left a heavy silence in their wake, and Guan Shan felt awkward. He’d thought He Tian had paid for the bills. Maybe he shouldn’t have assumed it, but he didn’t want to have that kind of conversation because it meant being indebted and that meant starting everything that had already happened. He _knew_ he shouldn’t have treated He Tian like that; knew he shouldn’t have seen him as someone with a bottomless wallet, where it didn’t matter what he paid for because he could. That settled in Guan Shan unpleasantly, but what else could he do? Couldn’t have paid for the private healthcare and the live-in doctor and the morphine and the equipment, and He Tian _knew_ that. But how typical, how darkly ironic: he’d got himself into this whole situation to pay for something that he then couldn’t pay for.  

He Tian said, to Jian Yi, ‘Guilty conscience?’

And he was only joking. Surely, he was only joking, but Guan Shan noticed, not for the first time, how Jian Yi’s eyes just _widened_ and Zhan was watching the whole thing too closely and it was like, for a second, He Tian had had hit the nail exactly on the head.

And He Tian didn’t notice it. Or maybe he did. Maybe he’d always known and it was a façade – that nonchalance, that dropping of hints that were so carefully pointed and well-timed and Guan Shan wouldn’t actually be surprised if it was a mask. Because he knew, even from middle school he knew, that He Tian couldn’t let go of the versions he made of himself. Couldn’t _help_ himself.    

‘Anyway,’ Zhan said after a while.

And Guan Shan said, ‘Yeah. Thank you. You didn’t have to. I can’t—’

Jian Yi was shaking his head. ‘You don’t need to,’ he said. ‘I did it as a friend looking out for a friend.’

Again, Zhan was casting him a strange, thoughtful glance that could have meant a lot, or nothing at all. Guan Shan had always found him kind of quiet, like everything happened behind the scenes. Except he treated Jian Yi – looked at him, spoke to him – in a kind of way that Guan Shan thought was sometimes remarkable in its intensity.

‘We should eat,’ He Tian said. There was space next to Guan Shan on the sofa but he sat instead with his back pressed against his legs, coffee table up to his waist as he put a pile of food in a bowl for Guan Shan.

They watched the first two episodes of a new drama that was airing, set a couple of hundred years ago, complex and censored enough that they lost interest quickly.

Jian Yi started telling them how he and Zhan spent most of Christmas in the library of Nanjing University while Zhan studied for his exams that he had a week or so ago; Jian Yi probably did homework and leaned back in his chair and threw peanuts at Zhan’s face until they got kicked out. They talked about their plans for the Spring Festival, about Valentine’s Day. Talked about basketball and food and a new film at the cinema.

Didn’t, actually, talk much about Guan Shan at all. Which he found comforting, but also strange. Because Jian Yi kept looking at him like he _wanted_ to ask him but that he couldn’t bring himself to. Like something was holding him back. And so he didn’t ask him anything, just kept shifting and clearing his voice in a way that made Guan Shan look at him and wait and be _expectant._

At eleven o’clock they turned on a show with music and performers and that, eventually, would call out the countdown for the New Year. Some fireworks in the city started at half-past and He Tian and Guan Shan exchanged a look because watching fireworks from the huge apartment windows reminded them of drunk stumbling and sex and fucking while light lit their skin up and how blissed it all had been.

And at a quarter to midnight Jian Yi’s phone rang.

And it was strange, because if the four of them were there, then who else would it be?

He shuffled down the hallway as he answered, and Guan Shan could barely make out the words over the music on the TV and the fireworks, but he heard something like, ‘Feng’ and ‘dog’.

And when he came back he was grimacing. ‘I asked someone to look after Abel,’ he told them. ‘The fireworks are scaring her.’

‘Bring her here,’ He Tian said, shrugging. ‘I don’t mind.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘It’s fine.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Zhan said, getting to his feet, but Jian Yi was shaking his head.

‘I’ll only be twenty minutes. It’s fine.’

‘You’ll miss midnight,’ Zhan said, and the words held something that Guan Shan thought he understood. That feeling that they were going to miss things, occasions, things that were supposed to mean something and that they could spend together, but he could only watch it. 

Could only watch as Jian Yi shrugged with an affable smile and said, ‘It’ll be midnight somewhere else in an hour.’

He left after this, and twenty minutes passed, and Zhan was frowning.

His phone rang once it hit thirty minutes and He Tian and Zhan took a shot of something that smelled of bleach because midnight had come and gone, and Zhan was still frowning, blinking, head clearing, sighing as he put it to his ear and said, ‘Where are you?’

And the fireworks were still going but they’d muted the TV so they all heard it when Jian Yi’s voice came through the speaker and said, ‘Xixi. Feng’s dead.’

* * *

‘What?’ Zhengxi said. He hadn’t misheard him. But he wanted to.

‘Someone—someone was waiting in my apartment. They trashed the place. He’s still in here.’

‘As in—’

‘There’s blood everywhere, Xixi. I don’t want to touch him but I need to close his eyes because he’s just _staring_.’

‘All right. Okay,’ he said. He stood up, grabbed his jacket from on one of the bar stools. He Tian was standing, looking at him, waiting for him like he could tell something wasn’t right and he was waiting for Zhengxi just to tell him what to do. Zhengxi shook his head at him, slowly. He couldn’t get them involved with this. Guan Shan had already… Could He Tian manage it?

And he looked like he wanted to say something, but Zhengxi was already heading down the hallway, legs moving stiffly, door shutting behind him.

‘Xixi?’

‘I’m on my way, okay?’ he told him. And, fuck, the way Jian Yi said his name made him start running because it was the way he used to sound. Before. The way it had sounded as men surrounded him and put their arms around his neck and got him in a hold, feet scrabbling against the hallway floor of his apartment. ‘I’m heading to the station now—’

‘ _No_! Don’t get on the metro. Get a taxi.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’ll lose signal on the metro. And I don’t know if someone’s following you. If they know I’m still alive they’ll think I’m with you. You’ll be easier to track on the train.’

Something about his words struck him as odd, and then, suddenly, Zhengxi felt cold. ‘Jian Yi. You need to leave. Get out of the apartment.’

‘What?’

‘Get out _now_.’

‘Zhengxi, I—’

‘ _Now_ , Jian Yi!’ he cried, desperate, didn’t care that people were looking at him funny, the way he was running, shouting into the phone. A taxi pulled up on the side of the road and he didn’t have time to feel bad when he pushed the waiting passengers away and blurted out the address to the driver. ‘Why would they kill Feng and just leave? They’d _wait_.’

Through the phone, he heard the sound of a door shutting. ‘Okay. Okay, I’m leaving.’

‘Tell me where you are, tell me exactly what you’re doing.’ His breath was ripping from his lungs as he tried to stay calm so that Jian Yi would think he was.

‘I’m going to the lift—’

‘Take the stairs. Don’t get in the lift. If there’s a rear staircase take that one.’

‘All right,’ Jian Yi muttered. His voice was shaking as he spoke, but he kept talking, told him the number of every floor he passed, the slap of his shoes echoing down the stairwell. Zhengxi’s heart was thumping, and the driver wasn’t going _fast_ enough.

‘Where are you now?’

‘I’m coming to the third floor,’ Jian Yi said. ‘I’m…’

He gripped the phone tighter. ‘Jian Yi?’

‘There’s… I think there’s someone waiting at the bottom,’ he said, so quiet Zhengxi felt his ears straining to try and catch it. ‘I can see their shoes.’

‘Go back up. Go back up _now_ and take another route.’

‘I’m already— _Fuck._ ’

‘What? What is it?’

‘Someone’s coming down. Xixi, I’m trapped. What do I do, Xixi?’

‘Just—just hang on, okay? I’m almost there.’

But he wasn’t. The traffic was thick and even if he got out and ran it would take him twenty minutes. Cycles and pedestrians walked out in front of the taxi even when they shouldn’t and the driver just flipped them off in a resigned sort of way and beeped the horn like he didn’t really want to but had to at least _acknowledge_ that Zhengxi was in the back and this whole body felt like it was electric and his breathing shouldn’t have been that _fast._

 _‘_ Zhengxi, I—Remember Jen Ta, okay? Jen Ta.’

‘I remember.’  

‘You promise?’

‘Jen Ta. I remember, Jian Yi.’

‘Zhengxi—’

‘Just hang on,’ he whispered, hated that he was talking like this was going to end like they both _knew_ it was. ‘Please, Jian Yi. Just wait for me.’

The whole thing was one massive bout of déjà vu. Except it had really happened the last time. And it was really happening again. Nothing about this was illusory and prophetic. It was too real, and it was terrifying. And he kept thinking how this wasn’t _fair_ because he was supposed to get longer than this, wasn’t he? He deserved more than this. Jian Yi deserved more than this.

But, after everything, there was nothing he could do.

Nothing he could do but close his eyes and let out a low breath, as Jian Yi said, weirdly calm like he’d accepted it, sounding just like Zhengxi imagined he would: ‘Zhengxi, it’s too late. They’re here.’

And the line, predictably, went dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/151206630204/chapter-xxxiii-part-ii-a-19-days-fanfic


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/151440351564/chapter-xxxiv-a-19-days-fanfic

When Zhengxi got there the place was a mess. There was shattered glass everywhere that he kept treading on. Blood soaked into the shards which he tried not to look at, but then there was the pool of red seeping around the body so it was sort of difficult _not_ to see it.

It glistened like his sister’s nail varnish, and occasionally a firework burst in the sky and made it look like glitter.

Zhengxi swallowed, looked away. At the torn through furniture. The broken table. The knife embedded in the TV. The water in the sink spilling over that he didn’t go and turn off because the sound was better than nothing but fireworks and crunching glass.

Some part of him had maybe thought that Jian Yi would be there still, legs swinging on the bar stool at the kitchen counter, stuffing his mouth with spiced peanuts and General Tso’s chicken he’d reheated in the microwave. But he wasn’t, and the other part of him had thought that was what he should have expected more. It wouldn’t, then, have hurt so much.

But the strange thing was that there was evidence now. That, strangely, there was this kind of destruction left in the wake of everything that proved he had been – that proved Jian Yi, for once, hadn’t been imagining all of this. Not like that last time. Where he’d wake up and wonder if Jian Yi had been something he’d imagined, some strange way of coping with school and with life. Like one of the focuses of those documentaries about strange people that aired on stranger TV channels.  

Eventually Zhengxi went outside. Didn’t shut the door behind him. Probably should have.

The old woman was in her coffee stall when he passed – didn’t know where he was going – because it was New Year’s Eve but people were drunk and still bought coffee and sweet pastries.

He stared at her.

She shook her head. Slow, but not shocked, like the whole thing hadn’t surprised her. Like she knew what sort of thing Jian Yi was caught up in, the net that was cutting into his throat like a plastic beer ring. Like every time he turned up with Abel at his side and ordered an iced coffee he was telling her everything. ‘They took him ten minutes ago,’ she said. ‘Put him in a car.’

‘And you didn’t think to call for help?’

‘I have a son. I have grandkids.’

Someone’s shoulder knocked into his, but he just stared at her.

Everything was moving past him, couples caught in kisses and kids on skateboards and teenagers drinking from bottles of liquor and groups staggering into themselves, singing, laughing, shouting, so _loud_. And everything was moving but him, and he didn’t know why he couldn’t move.

He pulled out his phone. It hadn’t stopped ringing since he’d left. And this time he answered it. Didn’t know what to _do_.

‘He Tian,’ he said. ‘I think I need your help.’

* * *

Jian Yi didn’t know if it was better or worse that they didn’t kill him immediately.

It was straight out of a movie. The whole thing. The warehouse on the docks, an old annex of the factory. The chains. The smell of chemicals and detergent that still clung to the concrete floor and the old machinery from the 60’s shoved up against the walls. The feet that skittered along the floor because they couldn’t quite reach it and he was on his tiptoes. The dim light. Jen Ta wearing the gloves. The mingling of sweat and blood soaking a white shirt. The bitter December – no, January now, wasn’t it? – air, the way his skin still felt feverish.

‘How Hollywood,’ he said, grinning, gums bloody and lips already swollen, and Jen Ta offered him another strike across his jaw.

‘Shut the fuck up, Jian Yi.’

‘You just told me to start talking.’

Jen Ta swiped a forearm across his forehead, like the whole thing was making him build up a sweat. Like this was tiring _him._

‘What did you tell the Americans, Jian Yi? It’s all I need.’

He’d asked before, and Jian Yi had felt that quite moment of realisation. _Ah_ , his mind had gone. For a few weeks – a month – he thought that maybe he’d never find out – didn’t know why he’d assumed that sort of safety. But Jen Ta knew, of course he did, and Jian Yi hadn’t had time to feel his heart start to jackhammer in his chest because there was too much pain everywhere else for him to feel the quiet echo of his heart.

Later, he might have regretted ending their network with the Americans. But later was not now, and Jen Ta hadn’t just put a bullet in his head, so he could tell it was going to be a long night.

‘Doesn’t matter what I told them.’

‘Oh, I think it does.’

Jian Yi shook his head – as much as he could without his ears ringing like he was locked in a bell tower. ‘Doesn’t matter because they’re not doing business with you again.’

‘You little fag,’ Jen Ta spat, hand fisting into Jian Yi’s hair until his neck strained, eyes watering, because this didn’t feel like how it did with Zhengxi. Not at all. ‘What did you do, suck one of them off in exchange for their loyalty?’

Jian Yi gritted his teeth. ‘I didn’t say they were doing business with me, either.’

Jen Ta let him go with a yank of his hand, and Jian Yi thought he must have ripped out a chunk of his hair the way it burned. His feet skittered on the hard floor, toes freezing because the concrete was so fucking cold but he needed to take the pressure of his arms because he couldn’t hang like that for much longer. (And he knew that he could. That his body could take so much more than this. But it was always hard in the beginning.)

‘You’re fucking ruining this for us, Jian Yi. Fucking ruining what your father built from _nothing_.’

‘You’ve got 14K—’

‘ _Fuck_ 14K! They’re fucking old school Triad who don’t know shit about drug manufacture and selling.’

‘Why’d you sign with them then?’

Jen Ta stared at him, shook his head, aghast. ‘You—you stupid, naïve little _fuck_.’

Jian Yi didn’t think he’d seen Jen Ta like this before. He’d seen him angry, a twitch at the corner of his mouth, fingers fiddling at the cuff of his shirt sleeves. Never—never seen him lose it like this. And Jian Yi wasn’t stupid enough to say he wasn’t fucking terrified.

Because he knew what Jen Ta did when he was calm. When he had things _composed_ and _together_. But he didn’t know this. Didn’t want to.

‘Tell me, Jian Yi. Tell me what you told them so I can make them a better offer. Things can be fixed.’

‘Where’s my dog.’

‘We didn’t touch your fucking dog.’

‘Why did you kill Feng.’

Jen Ta gritted his teeth. ‘Your cooperation was assured so long as you had someone you felt like you had on your side. Someone who connected you back to your father. Made you feel like you were safe. That’s what we used back then and it’s what we’ve been using now.’

‘Why did he call me? Why lure me in?’

‘Because everyone breaks, Jian Yi,’ Jen Ta said. Softly. With some strange sympathy, like he could see the way Jian Yi’s wrists were rubbing against the iron, the way his ribs were heaving, chest concave because he couldn’t properly breathe like this. Like he could tell that maybe Jian Yi hadn’t been unaffected by Feng’s death. Wasn’t—wasn’t _sad_ about it. Just… Disappointed. Had thought he’d be the sort of person who would fight until his dad got out. And wasn’t that a fucking joke – that he thought his dad, this dangerous, illusive figure, would somehow appear and save the day and they’d live happily ever after? And yet, as much as he had clung to the idea of Zhengxi coming to save him back then, he’d thought about his dad coming to do that even more. Wasn’t that person he was supposed to have been? That everyone kept saying he was?

‘And,’ Jen Ta said, ‘because he probably didn’t care about you as much as you thought he did.’

Jian Yi stared at him. Huffed a small laugh, a jovial, if bland and pained sort of smile. ‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘Jen Ta,’ someone said. A low, male voice. One of the hooded men that stood behind him, watching. Until now, silent.

‘Of course,’ Jen Ta said, like he’d forgotten. Like, for a moment, Jian Yi had been capable of that kind of distraction.

He walked behind Jian Yi, and Jian Yi could have turned, a slow, painful thing, but he heard the sound of a belt loosening, and there was a hand on his shoulder, and it made him still until he couldn’t help but struggle under the grip of that palm.

‘No,’ Jian Yi said, writhing, hoarse, trying to get away but he _couldn’t_. ‘ _Don’t_ —’

‘You sick little fuck,’ Jen Ta muttered, voice so close. ‘Like I’d ever fucking touch someone like you.’

And maybe he was right. Because in all the years he’d never touched him. Used to lean in and invade his space and tie him down onto a bed until Jian Yi thought that maybe he would because hate and lust were a close thing but he never actually _did_.  

‘Remember this?’ Jen Ta said. And then he was leaning around, waving something in his face.

The jade handle. The black blade that reflected nothing in its darkness. He saw it and remembered. Remember the sensation of it on his back, in his flesh, the way it would glide and go _deeper_ , keep going, until Jian Yi thought he couldn’t _take_ it anymore, held down, screaming into a pillow, hands and knees holding down his arms and legs, and he waited for the moment when things would go black, when his body would be kind and give him a reprieve, when his mind would shut off.

And it didn’t. Maybe because Jen Ta knew how to keep him clinging, how to keep him holding on, but also probably because he thought that if he was going to black out then he probably wouldn’t wake back up again.

And then Jen Ta was yanking at his shoulders so he was bent over, as far as the chains would allow, kicking between his feet so his stance widened, shirt riding up so he could feel the coldness of it gliding across the base of his spine, trembling, wanting to move and knowing he couldn’t because after a while he’d had to stop struggling because that just made things so _messy_.

‘Do you _remember_?’ he said again.

‘I remember,’ Jian Yi whispered, and he felt that pulling feeling in his stomach of wanting to get away, that kind of nausea, and he heard himself whimper as the knife pressed in and his toes were trying to keep him balanced and still and he turned his head and had to bite into his arm because focus on _that_ pain, focus on how _that_ felt and focus on not making a _sound_ even if he knew, eventually, he would.

He could feel the warm wetness of blood soaking into his waistband, and he knew—he _knew_ it wouldn’t be long before the whole shirt was wet and sticking to him because one of Jen Ta’s gloved hands was already creeping up the side of his torso, soft and tender as a lover. He felt so sick.

Jen Ta’s lips pressed close to his ear, and his body was almost flush against the back of him, which was odd because it meant he’d be getting blood on him too and usually Jen Ta had been so _clinical_. 

‘What did you tell the Americans, Jian Yi?’ he whispered.

And Jian Yi’s breath was shaky and quiet, and he tried to stop himself trembling even though it would probably keep him warm from the cold but he’d get worn out faster and he felt feverish, and he had to pull his teeth from the flesh of his arm so he could tell Jen Ta to go fuck himself.

* * *

The park by He Tian’s apartment was empty and cold and the fireworks had stopped a while ago and the drunks had wandered home or found an alley and the kids had gone back to their mothers and the lovers had gone back to their beds.

Except for the five of them, there was no one else there, and if anyone saw them they probably wouldn’t stay long.

‘You said you didn’t do criminal activity,’ He Tian said to his brother. Didn’t want to look at him. Had to. Because this wasn’t really about them anymore, and they’d have that time afterwards, and He Tian thought it was probably going to involve split lips and bruised knuckles and bloodied mouths.

‘We won’t.’

‘Then why were you working for his father? Drugs?’

Jan Xiu shook his head. ‘It was Jian Yi.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Zhengxi said, when no further explanation came. He looked paler every time He Tian looked at him. The circles on his eyes looked like bruises. Guan Shan, sitting on the bench, kept pulling on the sleeve of his coat to tell him to sit down because he looked like his legs were going to come out from beneath him in a minute.

‘His father hired us. Just to keep him safe. Nothing else.’

‘So when you turned up in middle school—’

‘He asked us to make Jian Yi safe,’ He Tian’s brother said. ‘He said members of his group were being killed and that Jian Yi was in danger. We were only providing a protection service.’

‘Why did his mother stop him?’ Zhengxi said quietly, voice shaking from the cold and from something else. It was dipping below freezing, and there were a few inches of snow blanketing the park in white and grey, but Guan Shan wanted the air even though he was shivering and He Tian didn’t want them in his apartment and Zhengxi was getting ready to run. Their voices fell flat in the dark quiet, trapped in some strange, preternatural bubble where sound couldn’t get in or out. Not a single car passed, and the lights from the skyscrapers and the shop signs looked dim.

‘She thought he would be okay,’ Jan Xiu said, hands shoved in the pockets of his overcoat, voice muffled behind a scarf. ‘She thought she could do enough – that the police were enough.’

‘And she was wrong,’ He Tian guessed.

‘Not at first,’ his brother said. ‘But three years ago his father told us there’d been another culling. That only one of his… co-workers was left that he trusted. They took Jian Yi. I don’t know what they did. But there was only really one of his father’s men left, and he couldn’t stand up and protect him against the rest of the group.’

He Tian stared at him. ‘Why did you say you had nothing to do with his disappearance? Whenever I asked you just denied everything.’

‘Because it was the truth. We didn’t. The group took him, not us.’

‘But you knew that – you knew and you didn’t say anything.’

‘I didn’t want you to be hurt, Tian. Didn’t want you to get involved. We all thought he’d been killed. I knew you had an interest in him, liked him for whatever reason. I didn’t want you to imagine that that would happen to him. To imagine what we thought had.’

He Tian knew what he would have thought, picturing Jian Yi tied up and starved and bloodied. Picturing him dead and thrown into a field somewhere, in the alley out the back of a restaurant, and just left there, body unburied and eaten at by the foxes and the birds and the maggots. He realised, picturing it all, that he was glad his brother had never told him.

‘We have the surveillance team tracking their cars,’ Jan Xiu told them, swiping through something on his phone. ‘But they’ve never been easy to track. They know the city’s blind spots. They know _our_ blind spots. They spent three years avoiding us. Longer.’

There was a silence, and it was a silence of hopelessness. Of realising what Jan Xiu was saying: that all they had to go on was a car that they might not even be able to track. Like, suddenly, Jian Yi was lost to them again, taken in the night, and that he might not come back again.

‘Did you find anything with the name Jen Ta?’ Zhengxi said.

‘Nothing,’ Jan Xiu said. ‘Checked through every database. Every interview transcript we’ve run. Whoever it is, the man’s a ghost. He’s not on the radar for criminal activity from our end or from MSS. They checked, too.’

He Tian ran a hand through his hair. ‘So what you’re saying is we can’t do anything because we don’t know anything.’

‘What about his phone?’ Zhengxi said, clutching at the possibility that there was _something_ left for them to do.

‘Thrown out the car window,’ Jan Xiu replied. ‘We found it on the pavement through Xinjiekou. There’s nowhere near that he could be kept. It’s too public.’

‘What if they’re just using a house?’

‘Too obvious. Cameras are everywhere residentially. The number plate would have appeared by now.’

‘So it’s somewhere commercialised?’ He Tian said. ‘ Somewhere old.’

His brother and Jan Xiu exchanged a glance. ‘In _theory_ ,’ his brother said carefully, so reluctant to give them any sort of promise. To confirm anything as _real_.

‘What about the industrial estate?’ Guan Shan said.

‘I checked,’ Jan Xiu said.

‘So did I,’ He Tian said. He knew the warehouses; Jan Xiu had said he navigated the cameras there as quickly as he did before Dai Lin had stopped using them as a store. He Tian glanced at Guan Shan, knew now why he had. But Guan Shan was sitting and looked small and his stomach still hurt him and He Tian couldn’t ever begrudge him much for it at all because the whole thing had been punishment enough.

‘And the commercial zone by the docks?’ Guan Shan said.

His brother looked at him curiously. ‘Why would we look there?’

And Guan Shan looked back, just as curious. ‘Well, that’s where Dai Lin said the group’s manufacturers were based. He said that’s where a lot of the crew would making collections on for local distribution.’

There was a silence.  

‘I thought you knew this,’ Guan Shan said slowly.

‘No,’ He Tian’s brother said. ‘No, we didn’t.’

‘They were making their own drugs. It’s got to be chemical manufacturing. Something—something that you can disguise as being legitimate but use it for drugs at the same time. Rule out all the big brands and you’ll have a list of potentials.’

‘Already on it,’ Jan Xiu said, swiping through screens on his phone.

‘Then let’s go,’ Zhengxi said, moving forward like he was ready to run there, and He Tian stopped him with an outstretched arm.

‘We don’t know if he’s there. There’s a hundred warehouses and factories in that zone alone.’

Zhengxi gritted his teeth at him. ‘Then we’d better start, hadn’t we?’

‘Zhengxi—’

‘No, He Tian. If this was Guan Shan you’d have already been there five minutes ago. So don’t tell me to think and be fucking _rational_.’

‘He’s right, Zhan Zhengxi,’ his brother said. ‘We can’t rush into this. We’re not—We’re not a reactive police force. We’re an independent unit who has to follow procedure. The SWAT team haven’t been briefed and we haven’t been given a warrant to attack. This is MSS territory. I’d be ruined—the _company_ would be ruined if I impeached on that.’

Zhengxi stared at him, and He Tian knew how his brother sounded: how politically correct. Like, now, after everything he’d had to do with them, with Jian Yi’s father, and everything he’d already done for them, he was choosing to be _careful_.

‘I’m willing to take a risk,’ Zhengxi said.

‘You’d die. It would be a suicide mission.’

‘Hold on,’ He Tian said, a hand held before Zhengxi could start again. ‘What else do you know about them, Zhengxi? What else has Jian Yi told you about the group?’

‘What else is there?’ Zhengxi said bitterly.

‘No, this could be important,’ Jan Xiu said. ‘Tell us everything.’And he did. Tell them everything: the flights, the trips at the weekend, the phone calls, the meetings with Feng, the days in the airports while they waited for planes to take off, the furtive information about his father that was nothing really, and that Zhengxi had seen him always clinging to. The meeting with his mother. The things Zhengxi thought he knew and things he shouldn’t have known and things Jian Yi had told him because _that_ much secrecy was going to kill them. Only, now, Zhengxi realised it was something far more _real_ than secrecy.

‘He met her?’ Jan Xiu said, surprised. ‘His mother?’

‘They weren’t always close but she’s still his mother,’ Zhengxi said.

‘We could…?’

‘No,’ He Tian’s brother said to Jan Xiu. ‘It’s too…’

‘Come on,’ Jan Xiu said. ‘It’s the best we’ve got.’

‘What?’ Zhengxi said. ‘What?’

Jan Xiu glanced at him. He spoke slowly. ‘His mother was working with the police force to help end the group’s movements and dealings. It never ended in much but her husband’s arrest. Whether that was intentional or not we don’t know. But…’

‘But she could contact the force she worked with and tell them what we know,’ He Tian’s brother continued. ‘That they’ve got a hostage. That she knows their location. They’d send out a team instantly.’

‘How would she know that we know?’ He Tian said.

Jan Xiu looked at He Tian’s brother. His eyebrows were raised. There was something… accusatory there.

‘You didn’t,’ He Tian said flatly.

‘I think he did,’ Jan Xiu said.

‘What?’ Guan Shan said.

‘He slept with Jian Yi’s mother,’ Zhengxi said, realising. ‘ _Seriously_?’

‘It’s not fucking important right now,’ He Tian’s brother muttered. He pulled out his phone. ‘Want me to make the call or not? Jian Yi could be dead by now.’

And it was those final words that made them fall quiet. Made the tension of the whole thing creep back in, made the cold seem bitter and the silence seem sharp.

‘Make the call,’ Zhengxi said. ‘Please.’

* * *

His back was wet and sticky and made Jian Yi feel so unclean soon enough. It hadn’t really taken long. Or, perhaps it had. But he didn’t think he’d passed out. Yet. Had he? He couldn’t remember.

He was burning everywhere now. And crying. And his arm was bleeding where he’d broken the skin and his nose was running and his voice hadn’t gone hoarse yet – sounded sharp and it echoed around the old warehouse – and sometimes Jen Ta laughed at it. Sometimes Jen Ta muffled the sound with his hand, squeezed his nose together until he couldn’t breathe and his vision was closing in. Sometimes someone would push iron knuckles across his face until he couldn’t really _open_ his eyes anymore for blood and swelling. And sometimes they’d hold a bag over his head until his mouth was wide and gaping and he was _desperate_ and almost _willing_ but not yet. And sometimes he wouldn’t say anything at all and he’d go quiet and Jen Ta would slap him across the face and tell him to stay with it. Tell him he hadn’t answered his questions yet. Wasn’t allowed that kind of reprieve.

‘Jen Ta,’ someone said. Kept saying his name like it was supposed to mean something. And every time they said his name he’d come back to himself. Or he’d do something _new_. Because—‘This isn’t _working_ , Jen Ta,’ they’d mutter.

‘Just shoot him and be done with it,’ someone else said. ‘He won’t talk. The boss is going to kill us anyway after—’

‘ _I’m the fucking boss!’_ Jen Ta roared, spinning on them. The sound rang around the walls. Made Jian Yi wince at the closeness of it. And after a moment Jen Ta closed his eyes, shifted his jaw. Breathed. ‘I’m the fucking _boss_ , all right?’ he said. ‘I’m the boss so you’ll do what I fucking tell you.’

Jian Yi thought that maybe he laughed at this. Tried to. Ribs heaving and screaming at the movement and not for the first time Jian Yi thought that he really should have stopped making stupid decisions by now.

And Jen Ta whirled at the sound, and Jian Yi heard something crack in his face before he felt it.

He thought he must have lost it at some point about then, because when he opened his eyes again his head was hanging and he thought his shoulder might have been dislocated because he wasn’t quite hanging from the chains like before. And everything—everything smelled of petrol. Burned his nose. Made him itch with it. And then Jian Yi realised that it was him. That he was soaked in it.

And Jen Ta was just watching him like he was waiting for something. Like Jian Yi was suppose to have chosen this point to give it up. And he wondered why he’d been holding out so long for this. Because it wasn’t like it was a secret he needed to keep. Wasn’t like _not_ saying it was going to hurt. But he knew that behind every punch and deep cut of the knife, Zhengxi was still safe. Knew that if he died, if they slipped up and killed him, then there’d be no reason to hurt Zhengxi because it wouldn’t _hurt_ Jian Yi if he was dead. So he kept quiet. Bore it like it was some punishment. Like he knew that after three years of this it was going to catch up with him eventually. Just like it had with Guan Shan, because there was a reason kids were never supposed to get involved with it all.

And he laughed again, but this time silently, tried to keep it a still thing. Because he hadn’t been a kid for a long time.

But then the amusement wore off. And he had never been so awake except for then. Because, behind him, he saw movement. Someone walking over. Heard a click. Saw something, even with eyes that would barely open, that looked like a flame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/151440351564/chapter-xxxiv-a-19-days-fanfic


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/151814245359/chapter-xxxv-a-19-days-fanfic

##  **NOW**

The funeral was a real thing and also it was not. It was real because Zhengxi was there and watching and because he thought he was awake and it was not real because he couldn’t tell for sure.

There were people there he’d never seen before and the priests were leaving now with their _let his merit accrue to his relatives and may they be happy_ and Zhengxi couldn’t ever remember Jian Yi saying he was Buddhist but maybe he’d written it somewhere. Maybe he thought a Buddhist funeral would be fun. Maybe he liked the journey of it and the silence of it and the contemplation of it as they walked behind the priests and the casket, closed, always closed, was lifted onto the hearse and they followed it with some strange kind of order like they knew what to do.

And Zhengxi was crying even though he probably shouldn’t have been and the wetness on his skin said that yes it was real. Yes there was snow everywhere and the casket was going to be buried in frozen ground and left to stare into some eternal darkness but—no. Zhengxi remembered. It would be cremation because apparently Jian Yi had asked for this and who had he _said_ any of this to who had he _written it down_ for? And of course it had to be burning of course it had to couldn’t leave anything left.

So he watched as offerings were given to the monks and the thanksgivings started and suttas were being chanted and the ashes had to be left there until the next day and Zhengxi wondered where they were supposed to be spread because Jian Yi had never _said_ that and he hadn’t told him any of this and weren’t they best friends wasn’t he supposed to _know_ and maybe he’d put them over the hill because Jian Yi had been so beautiful and young and ephemeral and daring then and—

He Tian was hugging him. Had he made a sound? Looked like he needed it? Oh. The service had ended. And Guan Shan was next, didn’t hug with that pat-on-the-back thing that people at school did but a real, close thing that Zhengxi thought was stable and real. And they nodded at each other and it was grim and money was being collected and the monk was bidding farewell and people were pulling sunglasses on because the white sky heavy with snow was bright and because they maybe had to hide that they weren’t, actually, crying, and did they even know Jian Yi and who were they working for?

Zhengxi swallowed. Watched them leave. He didn’t know. Didn’t know. Knew so little, didn’t he? Knew so little.

He just hoped Jian Yi wanted this. Hoped Jian Yi knew.

* * *

##  **THEN**

It smelled of burnt hair. It smelled of fire, and smoke. It smelled of heat in the back of the throat when the air, outside was so cold.

It smelled of frozen waters and the sound of a night holding its breath and people holding theirs. It smelled of oil and machines and metal paint and it smelled of dying.

It smelled of dying, and it sounded like it, too, and He Tian thought that soon it was going to look like it.

They were waiting. And inside they couldn’t hear anything. And the police were in their riot gear and they had guns and batons and shields that covered their bodies and hid their faces and they were almost lost against the black grating of the walls of the factory outhouse. But everything around them was white, the snow and the freezing river and the smoke of it that lifted upwards and away towards a night sky that was no warmer and no less sharp in its dreadful beauty.

‘We found it,’ they had told his brother, over a radio while they waited in a car near the docks. And they should have stayed there – should have – but Zhengxi was climbing out the back seat and demanding _where where_ fucking hell _where_? And _how_ and were they _sure_ and the woman through the radio said, ‘His dog was waiting outside. We’re sure.’

And now they stood there in the huddled hush of a night holding something in, tight in its core, and had to wait for a signal. Had to wait until everyone’s mics and radios were wired up and that their vests were on properly and their guns all clear to fire. And they kept looking at He Tian – at Zhengxi and Guan Shan too – and looked like they wanted to tell them to fuck off and It wasn’t their place to be there and they knew it. Everyone knew it. But He Tian’s brother just shook his head at them – they won’t go in they just want to wait –  and He Tian maybe didn’t hate him so much then.

‘What’s taking so long?’ Zhengxi muttered, shifting on his feet, moving like a live wire that He Tian thought was going to spark. Would hurt if he touched him.

But he did anyway and he was thrumming under his hand and shaking and—

‘It’ll be okay,’ He Tian said.

‘But he’s just in there and—and—’

‘They’re checking blueprints and layouts,’ He Tian’s brother told them. ‘They need to check that when they go in they’ve got everything covered. Exits and windows and staircases.’

‘How long?’ Guan Shan said.

‘Not long.’

He Tian could _hear_ Zhengxi’s teeth grinding. Could hear the working of his throat as he swallowed and tried not to throw up. Tried not to panic and to breathe and just breathe and the cold and the snow and the distant sound of fireworks starting up again deep in the city didn’t mean anything when Jian Yi was there he was _there_.

‘Permission to enter?’ someone muttered into a radio.

And there was silence for a while. And everyone was still. And He Tian saw his brother lean into the lead’s ear and mutter something, words met with a jerk of their head.

And then more silence and—

‘Permission granted.’

It should have been chaotic but instead the doors swung open and they ran in with footsteps _thud thud thud_ in sync on the concrete floor and it should have been chaotic but the sound of gun fire and radios firing up and smoke bombs firing out and shouting and echoes of guttural groans and shouts was _lyrical._

And Zhengxi went taught like a bow string and Guan Shan’s lip was bleeding because he kept pulling at it with his teeth and He Tian was staring at his brother. ‘What did you say to him?’

His brother was frowning, listening into the radio piece in his ear. He barely glanced at He Tian. ‘What?’

‘You. You said something to that guy. You said something.’

‘Yes. Just reminding him of protocol.’

And He Tian couldn’t ask him any more even though why was _he_ reminding the _police_ of _protocol_ and they weren’t allowed to go in. Just had to listen to it all. And He Tian felt the tension of it all in his throat. Felt the feeling of it all like he had in the car on the way to that café, before he’d found Guan Shan slumped against the wall in a pool of blood. But it was different now because he couldn’t _go_ in and Jian Yi was so _close_ and he could feel Zhengxi thrumming beside him, taught like a bow string, and it must have felt like—must have felt exactly what it was like. Having to know the person you were in love with might be dead on the other side of the wall and you weren’t allowed to go them and wasn’t this parallel too real? Too much?

It didn’t actually last long – not like last time. There wasn’t so much of a fight because they weren’t Dai Lin’s crew who had everything and nothing to lose and had to just sit quite and wait for a prison sentence because the group couldn’t help them now. Triad couldn’t quite look after their own that much or they’d get compromised. And eventually everything calmed down, and the gun fire was sporadic until it stopped completely. And the smoke had stopped curling out from beneath the doors and words were being passed over the radios, codes that He Tian didn’t understand, and eventually someone said, ‘All clear.’

And there was movement beside him, so fast it was a blur, and He Tian’s mind caught up eventually and—

‘For fu— _Zhengxi_!’

‘Someone _stop_ h—’

But he was gone, already in, and He Tian could only run after him with his bother and all they could see were the dark, suited shapes on the floor and there—there was a body wrapped in blankets being lowered from the chains that swung lightly from the ceiling.

And they stared at it, stood there staring. And then He Tian stumbled over to the side of the warehouse before he threw up because he thought he knew. And he had never wanted to not be right about something more in his life than that moment.

* * *

##  **NOW**

‘I need a drink,’ said Guan Shan.

‘I need ten,’ said Zhengxi.

They didn’t go to the riverside, where He Tian thought they would. Instead Zhengxi took them to a small road-side restaurant not so far from his apartment. The tables and chairs sat beneath a small tarpaulin canopy dotted with fairy lights, and the woman who owned it cooked food in woks over small camp-fire stoves. The tables were wet from the snow, and they had to wipe their hands over the laminated menus and it was cold. But they didn’t care. Tucked their mouths into their scarves to keep their faces warm and ate hot plates of noodles and drank too much beer while Zhengxi told them about the night Jian Yi had just turned up. How he’d sat here, opposite him. How he’d eaten all his food and didn’t drink beer and it had been like he’d never left.

And now they’d just burned his casket and been to his funeral and wasn’t—wasn’t life funny sometimes?

* * *

##  **THEN**

They lowered the body and everything was still so dark so it was hard to see, but two guys from the police force kneeled down next to it because they had crosses on their backs, trained paramedics, and then they started pulling out sheets from their packs and Zhengxi moved forward but Guan Shan stopped him with a hand on his wrist and—

‘What are you doing?’ Zhenxgi said.

And the guy nearest to them just—just shook his head.

And there was a moment when they couldn’t do anything but stand there and watch him shake his head. And wonder what that was supposed to mean. What was it supposed to mean?

And then Guan Shan made a sound like he was choking, and He Tian’s eyes grew wild, and Zhengxi was just staring at him like he was waiting for him to say something else and he was looking at them all like what they were saying didn’t mean anything and was supposed to mean something and—

‘What…?’ Zhenxgi said, and it was _so_ small. So small.

And He Tian didn’t think he knew what it was like to feel his heart break at a sound – at a look, but it was. Because god he was just looking at the body they were covering with sheets and the chains were still swinging and there was blood beneath them on the floor and that man had just shaken his head.

‘My apologies for your loss,’ he said.

And Zhengxi’s expression didn’t change. Even when He Tian’s brother came forward and put a hand on his shoulder, turned him so he was facing away from the body—from the _body_ — and his eyes were just falling somewhere on his brother’s jacket and hadn’t moved.

‘Zhengxi,’ his brother said. ‘I…’

And it was the first time He Tian had seen him speechless. And he realised that he was speechless too because nothing could quite come out from his throat and it was a suffocating kind of feeling even though he knew he was breathing. And he could breathe just fine. It was the pressing of smog in the air that he could feel on his skin and in his hair and he didn’t know how—didn’t know what to do with it because how could you deal with something like this? How could you _manage_ something that was inescapable. Something that was—someone who was just lying there.

‘We didn’t get Jen Ta,’ Jan Xiu was saying. ‘Apparently he made a run for it before we could get here.’

‘Later,’ He Tian’s brother muttered. And Jan Xiu blinked up from his phone and looked at them and at his brother who was shaking his head. Glanced over his shoulder at the shape on the floor and his head kind of jerked when he caught sight.

‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘God, I’m—’

And he broke off, and He Tian’s brother let go of Zhengxi’s shoulder and pulled Jan Xiu away somewhere and then the three of them were just standing there and He Tian noticed now that Zhengxi was shaking his head. Slow at first. And then it was a fast, jerking movement that must have been making him feel sick and he was saying no. ‘No. It’s not. No.’

And then he moved, started striding forwards and He Tian had to grip his wrist because _fuck—god—_ no, he _couldn’t_ and—

‘ _Don’t_ , Zhengxi. Don’t.’

‘I have to—’

‘No. You don’t want to see it.’

Because he knew from the pools of blood and the smell of burning that whatever was there wasn’t Jian Yi. Wasn’t him. And that was never how He Tian wanted to remember him. Never how he wanted to let Zhengxi remember him because none of them deserved that.

He was looking at the dog now. Someone was looking at her wounds and she was whining a quiet sound and her paws were scrabbling against the floor because she kept trying to get up and move towards Jian Yi.

And Zhengxi was talking again but couldn’t hear himself because nothing was really making sense anymore. ‘Abel will be – he’d be sad if he knew she was—he’d be—’

‘Zhengxi it’s—it’s—it’s all right. It’s _okay_ it’s—’

But his own throat was closing and thick and it was hard to say anything and Guan Shan was just standing there silent and crying and he just shook his head because he couldn’t say anything either.

‘He Tian, I—’

‘We need to go, Zhengxi. We need to go. We can’t be here.’

He was still staring at him. Like he didn’t get it. ‘But he’s still _here_.’

‘I know. I know. Let them—just let them look after him—‘

And he started to pull him away, arm around his shoulder, started to pull him towards the exit and—

‘ _No_ ,’ Zhengxi was saying, pulling away from him, pulling like he couldn’t stand He Tian’s touch like it was _burning_ him and— ‘I’m not—I’m not _leaving_ him—please, I—’

‘Zhengxi, they know what they’re doing, it’ll be okay just—’

‘I can’t _leave_ him here,’ he choked out. ‘He doesn’t deserve to just be _left_ here _on his own_ I can’t—’

‘Zhengxi, _please_. Please. Let them do their job. We’ll see him soon, okay? Let them—Jian Yi wouldn’t want us to see him like this, okay? He wouldn’t want it like this. It’s not fair, okay? He’ll be safe with them.’

‘But I promised him,’ he whispered, and he looked so _confused_. ‘I promised I’d—I’d _protect_ him. I _promised_ him and I keep _failing_ and—’

‘And you did everything you could. And he _knew_ that, all right?’

‘I can’t—I can’t _breathe_ I—’

‘He _knew_ it. And he loved you for it. Always. He always knew it.’ He was shaking. ‘Now let’s just—let’s take Abel and get her some help. Because that’s what he would want. He’d want us to do that. Okay?’

And… eventually Zhengxi had to nod. Had to nod. Had to leave him, one final glance at the shape beneath the blankets and the sheets. At the chains hanging from the ceiling and they were wet with something. And he had to leave him.

* * *

##  **NOW**

‘I need to go and pack.’

‘What time’s your flight?’

‘Like, ten tonight.’

‘You’re sure you don’t want us to take you to the airport?’

‘I’m sure. But thanks,’ Zhengxi said.

‘Sure.’

‘No, really. Thank you. For everything you’ve done. What you’ve both done. For what your brother’s done.’

He Tian rubbed at the back of his neck, like he was _embarrassed_. And he kind of was. Because after five years or whatever they still didn’t really do that kind of thing. They drank beer and called each other out on their shit and laughed and asked how life was but didn’t want to go much deeper than that. Because it was opening up a can of worms, that kind of thing. Because they dealt with it enough normally, outside their little group, and didn’t need to find it in each other too.

But he said, ‘It’s fine.’ And, ‘You would have done the same.’

Zhengxi offered him a smile at this. A small, fractured thing that didn’t reach his eyes. He would have wondered if Zhengxi could smile like it was a full, face-split thing, but He Tian had caught him a couple of times at it, and it was always because of Jian Yi. Because he’d embarrassed himself or done something stupid or done something endearing that caught Zhengxi so _unexpectedly_.

‘Don’t go for too long, okay?’ He Tian said. ‘We’ll miss you here. Or whatever’

‘I know,’ Zhengxi said. ‘But I need to. I can’t be here while he’s…’

‘We know,’ Guan Shan said simply. Because they did know. Really, they did. ‘But, like, don’t be a stranger. Come back soon. When you can.’

‘As soon as your brother says it’s safe,’ Zhengxi said to He Tian.

He Tian nodded. ‘They found Jen Ta at Fuzhou trying to get into Taiwan. It won’t be long before the rest follow.’

‘Unless he’s a fucking gorgon,’ Zhengxi muttered.

Guan Shan shook his head. ‘He was never that big. The men under him were still following Jian Yi’s father. That’s why he—’

‘Yeah,’ Zhengxi said quietly. ‘I’ll drink to usurpation.’

He Tian snorted. ‘An excuse as good as any,’ he said, taking a swig from his own bottle.

And they got to sit there for a while and pretend like this was how it always used to be. That there wasn’t a person-shaped hole amongst them. An empty kind of shadow.

* * *

##  **THEN**

For a while, there was darkness.

And Zhengxi was in a bad place.

* * *

##  **NOW**

He wasn’t sure what to pack. Hadn’t ever really been anywhere out of China and he wondered so much about where he was going. Wondered what the air would be like. Wondered if he’d like the food. Wondered how cold it would be. Wondered how much he’d struggle in the lectures because they were all in English. Wondered how bright the sky would be at night. Wondered if it would make a difference because the stars were eternal and they weren’t going anywhere. Wondered what it was going to be like to be that _happy_ again.

* * *

##  **THEN**

Light cracked through now and again. Sometimes an opened fridge door. Sometimes the drawing of his blinds. Sometimes someone would turn on his bedside lamp.

But mostly there was still darkness.

And nothing had really stopped hurting yet. Or, perhaps, nothing had really starting feeling like much yet.

And Zhengxi was still not in a very good place.

* * *

##  **NOW**

The drive didn’t take long. The driver wasn’t talkative, either, which was good, and he kept the radio on low and unobtrusive, which was better. The airport was quiet, because it was late, and cold, and not many people were flying out this time of year. There were a few men in suits towing small cases and laptop bags and speaking into their phones. There were fathers pulling crying kids out their prams and trying to pull out coats and shoes from their suitcases because they were over the weight limit. But mostly there were people like him that probably looked a little lost and weren’t really sure where they were going.

He handed over his passport and had a moment of panic that he’d probably forgotten about ten things or that, yeah, maybe someone had packed his case and managed to slip in a kilo of coke because he did keep strange company but no. No, he packed it himself. First time travelling? Yeah. Bit nervous. Didn’t tell the woman behind the desk that, though.

She gave him his boarding card and he sweated through security and eventually found a Starbucks near his gate because his flight wasn’t actually for two hours.

He pulled out his phone, wiped his hands in his jeans because they were floury from the ciabatta and there was a text.

 _24 hours to go_ , it read.

And was it really that long? A whole day? And sure, it had been weeks, really, but now it was so _close_ and he wasn’t sure he could take that. (He could. Of course he could.)

He had to stop in Beijing and Copenhagen but He Tian’s brother had said that was better if it was broken up. Not as hard to track. He’d offered to pay for his tickets. Offered to fly him in the plane the company owned. But no, Zhengxi had said. He wanted to do it right. Almost, masochistically, wanted the wait and the too close seating and the popping of his ears and the dryness of his throat because the struggle, always, made it worth it.

‘That’s aphoristic,’ He Tian had said, when he told him.

And Zhengxi had stared at him. ‘What?’ he said.

And He Tian said, ‘Well. Aphorisms. Some kind of bland statement that’s actually pretty fucking true.’

‘What’s that, though?’

‘What you said: We’ve got to struggle for it to be worth it in the end.’

And Zhengxi hadn’t said anything for a little while. And then. He nodded. Because. Yeah. That kind of fit, didn’t it?                                              

* * *

##  **THEN**

His phone rang. It had been ringing for a while. Maybe days. He wasn’t sure. His mother came around at some point and he hadn’t answered his door. His sister came around too but she had less patience so she just swore at him then got in an argument with his neighbours and then she had to leave.

But the ring tone, this time, wasn’t familiar, and neither was the number, so he reached out for it from beneath his duvet and winced at the glow of the screen.

Eventually it stopped ringing. And then a text popped up.

_Answer._

It rang again. He answered.

‘Who is it?’

‘He Tian’s brother.’

‘What do you want?’

‘You need to come by my place. There’s something I… I need to speak to you about what happened.’

‘I don’t want to speak to you.’ _I don’t want to speak to you about what happened._

‘Please. Zhengxi. There’s something you need to hear. There’s a car waiting outside your block.’

‘I said I—’

The tone was dead. He’d hung up. Zhengxi stared at the screen, because he thought that was odd. Because people hadn’t been treating him like that. And then the screen glowed again.

Another text. From He Tian.

_did my brother txt you? he’s asked me to go to his. said there was smth he wanted to say??_

And Zhengxi, this time, found himself sitting up. Staring at the screen. Because this was… different too. Wasn’t a message that asked how he was _holding up_ and if he _needed_ anything and yeah he fucking did. Needed a lot. Needed some things in particular. Needed someone. Couldn’t have him. And it was _killing_ him.

And he remembered how it felt before. The last time. And he thought he couldn’t do it anymore because that had been a loss that was searching. It was a strange, slinking determination that had whispered to him. _He’s alive_ , it said. _Keep looking_. And when he couldn’t look anymore it said, _Wait for him. He’ll come eventually_.

And this time he didn’t get it. Didn’t get the whisper. Didn’t—Couldn’t _hope_.

And so it was why it took him three hours to finally get out the house. A shower that used up all the hot water. An hour spent just staring at his fucking drawers because he’d stopped bothering to wear clothes after the first week. Had to eat something that wasn’t half-frozen bread and tinned food that he didn’t bother to heat and browning bananas that were attracting fruit flies.

And when he opened the door it was bitter and everything was white and blinding and covered in snow and he was only wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and a thin jacket because for a while he’d lost permanence. Forgotten where he was in the world. And there was a man waiting outside a sleek black car and he got in and maybe should have said something or asked a question or checked that he worked with the company but it was too cold and he was too… too…

He closed his eyes. Breathed.

‘Ready, Zhengxi?’

‘Yeah. Just drive. Please.’

* * *

##  **NOW**

‘ _We’re … landing in Copenhagen. Your … ten o’clock at night, and the temperature outside … frosty minus six centigrade … I’d like to thank you … safe onward journey.’_

* * *

##  **THEN**

‘You look like shit.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Seriously, man. When was the last time you ate anything? Guan Shan left food at your door.’

‘I couldn’t—I haven’t been able to stomach…’

He Tian bit his lip. And, really, he didn’t look too well himself. His skin was sallow and his lips torn and his jet black hair made him look so _pale_.

‘Guan Shan’s inside,’ He Tian said, and his voice had gone thick and choked. ‘We’ve been waiting but…’ And he seemed to get it. That things took kind of a long time now. That nothing happened too quickly because it was like pulling at stitches if you weren’t careful.

They went inside. Zhengxi tried to be polite and say his hellos and how are yous but he thought they must have come out strange and garbled and not quite _right_ and He Tian’s brother didn’t look at him like he was expecting much from him or that he even had to give him much.      

‘This is hard for you all,’ He Tian’s brother said, when they were filling the sofa and armchairs and there was an antique tea set on the table that no one had touched except him and Jan Xiu;. ‘I know. And I want to say how—how sorry I am that it ended how it did.’

‘How it did,’ He Tian said dully.

‘We did what we could but we were… It was such a difficult position for us.’

Jan Xiu, the man that had been there that night, stepped forward. ‘It wasn't… How we should have done it. How we could have done it. And I wish now…’ His eyes ran over Zhengxi. ‘I wish we’d handled things better after.’

‘I’m… sorry,’ Guan Shan said slowly, eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t get—I don’t get what you’re trying to say. It wasn’t your… There was nothing you could have done.’

He Tian’s brother shifted, propped himself up against the desk pressed into the corner of the room. It was sparse and held only a cactus, a MacBook, and a copy of the New Testament, and Zhengxi couldn’t really think about what that said about the kind of person he was.

‘Jian Yi had to die,’ He Tian’s brother said.

And he probably should have chosen his words better because Zhengxi felt something rip a bit inside of him and he winced and closed his eyes and he probably shouldn’t have said it at all and—

‘You fucking insensitive piece of shit.’

‘Just listen, He Tian,’ Jan Xiu said wearily.

He Tian’s brother continued. ‘He had to die because the group wouldn’t have let him go. Or he had…’ He sighed. ‘He had to _seem_ like he’d died.’

Silence.

Zhengxi could hear his heart beating, feel it in his chest.

‘What?’ he said. Because it couldn’t be what he thought it was and Jian Yi wasn’t some fucking biblical character that kept getting resurrected and who did that make Zhengxi? What did it mean that he had to keep living every time he died and _what was he saying_? What did it mean that he kept having to lose him because he didn’t think it was the kind of pain that you got used to. Must have been like being an immortal who got to see the ones you loved grow old and weary and die in your arms before someone else came along and you said you _wouldn’t_ – said you’d had enough of something that was as base and human as _love_ and you did it anyway because you were an idiot and _what was he saying._

‘He was burnt bad but it was only superficial so he healed quickly. Someone in the group was still working for his father so he smothered him before he got too burnt and—’

In fact, Zhengxi didn’t have to swing his fist into his jaw because He Tian was already doing it and it took Jan Xiu and Guan Shan to try and pull him off, and Zhengxi was just staring at him as he touched his bleeding lip, shifted his jaw, tested if it still worked right.

‘Yeah, I deserved that,’ he said.

‘Where is he?’ Zhengxi said, and Jan Xiu jerked his head towards a door through the kitchen that lead out onto a terraced balcony overlooking the city. So close.

And He Tian’s brother was still talking but Zhengxi wasn’t listening because he was already there and opening the glass door and there was a heater on the balcony so it wasn’t too cold even though everything passed the glass railing was covered in snow and Jian Yi was wrapped in blankets. And he was listening to music, earphones in his ears, so he didn’t notice him at first, and then he glanced because he must have sensed movement and he jumped a bit.

And they stared at each other.

And Zhengxi’s lungs were heaving.

And Jian Yi was smiling up at him, cautious and scared and _sorry_ and his hair was cut short and shorn around his face because some of it had been burnt and there were bruises faint and yellow on his face but he looked normal and—

And Zhengxi was holding him so tight and sobbing into his neck and—and clutching at him and _gasping_ and—Jian Yi was crying out because he was _crying_ but Zhengxi was touching the cuts on his back too much and his fractures weren’t fully healed and he felt something washing over him like he could feel Zhengxi’s _sadness_ and—

‘ _Please don’t leave me again Jian Yi —’_

 _‘_ I won’t, I—’ 

_‘Please don’t leave me I thought I was going to die I couldn’t do it anymore and —’_

_‘Zhengxi—’_

_‘— and I had pills and I can’t stand if you leave me again please don’t_ go I _can’t—_ I _can’t—Jian Yi,_ I _can’t—_ ’

‘Shhh—’

‘Don’t do it to me again, Jian Yi, _please_ I can’t take it—’

‘I won’t I won’t I _promise_ —’

‘Jian Yi I _can’t._ ’

‘I _know_ ,’ he choked out. ‘You think all this coming back to life stuff is _easy_?’

‘Jian Yi, I was getting ready to _die_ —’

‘No, you weren’t. You weren’t because you knew I’d come back to life just to fucking kill you myself if you ever did. You _never_ do that for me. For anyone. _Never_.’

‘I… I…’

And what was he supposed to say now? Couldn’t not stare at him. Couldn’t not touch him. And he couldn’t get over the way he smelled like warmth and realness and something sweet and Zhengxi’s tongue was running over his neck, and his hands were pulling in his hair – not tight, just enough to make his lips part, make his mouth search for Zhengxi’s until he found it and it was hot and wet and warm and tasted like Zhengxi thought it would have done since he was fucking fifteen and he was so careful with him now, sitting beside him and almost in Jian Yi’s lap and cradling his face between his hands like it was the most precious – the most fragile thing he was ever likely to drop and break.

Like he could hold him like this forever if he could, some strange burst of warmth on a darkening January afternoon while the city moved about below them and was layered in snowy clouds and mist and Zhengxi hadn’t stopped crying so it was wet. And his tears were freezing on his cheeks and his eyes were screwing up tight because it stung and Jian Yi kept kissing them away from his skin.

‘I’m trying to stop,’ he whispered eventually.

And Jian Yi smiled into the skin where his shoulder sloped into his neck. ‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I get it.’

And listening to him say that was like every single text and call and handwritten note shoved through his letterbox that asked him if he was okay and if he’d eaten and if he wanted to get some fresh air and it was so fucking detached. They were seeing how he was. If he was coping. If he was managing. Weren’t saying, _I feel it too._

And that was everything he heard in Jian Yi’s quiet words. And it felt like such a _relief_. Such a lifting burden. So cathartic.

‘Never leave me again,’ he told Jian Yi. ‘Never.’

And Jian Yi laughed, and his eyes were so clear even though they were brimming with unshod tears and he _laughed_. ‘We’ve got more than two years now,’ he said. ‘We’ve got—we’ve got a lifetime.’

* * *

##  **NOW**

It was cold. It was really, really cold. And there were only three taxis at the rank and the airport was quiet and he’d been travelling for a whole day but moving back in the world so it was still dark.

He gave the driver the address on a scrap of paper and wrapped his arms around himself as the heater in the taxi burst to life. They pulled away from the airport and the lights of people, until eventually there was just darkness and the hum of a radio playing something strange and unfamiliar and Zhengxi could see nothing out the window. Just darkness.

And for a while they were just driving into nothingness and the taxi was lurching and sputtering as they went up hills that were more like cliffs and the driver kept laughing and saying, ‘It’s okay,’ as he caught sight of Zhengxi’s reflection in the mirror and how he gripped the handle of the door in panic.

And then eventually they saw a light. Just one light. And Zhengxi realised there was so much darkness because they were on the coast and because they were on the edge of the sea and the land was covered in white and Zhengxi felt his heart burst at the sight of that light.

‘Empty,’ the driver said quietly, in English, and Zhengxi knew what he meant so he nodded and said, ‘Yes. Very empty.’

And they pulled up to the light and it was a house – a cottage tucked against a backdrop of black water and on the smallest strip of land. A tiny thing in the middle of nowhere. And Zhengxi gave the driver probably too many króna and nodded as he pulled his suitcase over a rocky path. He stared at the door as the car pulled away, didn’t wait.

And Zhengxi knocked. Once. Twice. The third time a little less tentative.

And Zhengxi heard a sound like scrabbling, nails on a door, and then he heard footsteps and someone murmuring and his heart was beating so fucking hard in his chest.

And then it opened, and Abel was running around him and licking his hands and Zhengxi looked up and his heart—sort of stopped.

Because Jian Yi was there. Arms folded. Leaning against the doorframe. And his hair was mussed and his eyes were half-asleep and his smile was soft and he was wearing a jumper that looked like he’d knitted it or bought it from a local somewhere an hour away.

And he said, ‘Hey.’

And Zhengxi blinked and said, ‘Iceland, huh?’

And Jian Yi shrugged. ‘Someone said it would be nice once.’

‘What an idiot.’

‘Yeah,’ Jian Yi said. ‘Want to come in and we can talk about how stupid they were?’

And this time Zhengxi shrugged and said, ‘Alright, then.’

‘Alright.’

And it was impossibly warm inside, and there was a fire lit, blankets draped over a sofa that Zhengxi was already moving towards, and he fell onto it at the same time Jian Yi did and suddenly they were a tangle of limbs and Jian Yi had his head on his chest and Abel was trying to make a space for herself at their feet and Jian Yi was asleep in three minutes.

And Zhengxi could hear him breathing and feel his chest moving. And he thought he could sleep for a day or more but the feel of him – the sound of him – kept him awake for a little longer.

And he thought he could probably put sleep off for a little while if he could have this. And he’d have it for years. For a lifetime. But he was learning to appreciate the little things. The little things that weren’t little because they meant so much. So he shut his eyes, and smiled, and was warm, and wondered if he could forego sleep for a lifetime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/151814245359/chapter-xxxv-a-19-days-fanfic


	38. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/152333239939/aphorism-epilogue

##  **Two Years Later**  

‘We’re going to be late if you don’t hurry up.’

‘Just give me a—Have you seen my shoes?’

‘The red ones?’

‘The white trainers. With the gold star.’

‘They’re in the cupboard in the bedroom. Third shelf.’

‘Are you—Got them.’

‘Are you ready, Mrs Mo?’

‘Ready and waiting, He Tian. Huai’s already there. And didn’t I tell you to call me Mo Ying?’

‘Habit, Mrs Mo.’ His smile was a winning thing.

After a while, Guan Shan appeared from the doorway, hair wet from a shower. His shirt was on back-to-front, which He Tian told him about in the car. His laces were undone, which Mrs Mo tied for him when he stuck his feet between the front seats.

‘Did I raise you in a barn?’ she said. There was nothing hard in her voice, and it filled the car with warmth like the early spring heat that was creeping about the city, lighting up the trees with blossom, painting the skies pale pinks in the morning that came with the sound of birdsong. Came with the feel of an arm strewn across a chest, warm and heavy but a pressing that was safe.

‘Are you sure you’re okay on your own, Ma?’ Guan Shan said. It was not the first time he’d said it. He Tian, hands on the wheel, sighed.

‘I was able to live my life before you, you know, Guan Shan,’ she says fondly. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘I know but—’

‘But nothing. I’ll be with Huai most of the time trying to set up the bookshop. By the time you get through security you won’t be thinking of me at all.’

‘That’s not true,’ Guan Shan protested.

He Tian glanced at him through the mirror. ‘Yes, it is. Or I haven’t done my job properly.’

They dropped her off in the city, outside the bookstore she was going to open with Huai. It was small and needed work, but it wouldn’t take much.

He Tian helped her into her wheelchair. They both got out, kissed her on the cheek.

‘You’re good boys,’ she said.

‘Thanks, Ma.’

‘Have a good week, Mrs Mo. You’ve got our numbers if you need.’

‘Just go or you’ll miss your flight.’

They didn’t, actually, miss their flight. He Tian bought out most of duty free. Guan Shan stank of perfume by the time he got through. On the plane, Guan Shan slept with a head on He Tian’s shoulder. When he woke up, He Tian’s head was on his. Neither of them moved for the flight. Their hands didn’t let go; their rings brushed each other occasionally. The sound of metal on metal made Guan Shan sigh.

The wait between planes took a while, and the second flight felt, somehow, longer.

‘I hate flying,’ Guan Shan said. It was the fifth time. Like He Tian hadn’t been able to tell when he shut his eyes as the ground left beneath them, or the way he squeezed his hand like he could break it. He Tian squeezed back, sometimes, just as hard, and it was a grounding thing.

‘Not long.’

‘You said that three hours ago.’

‘Time’s relative.’

Guan Shan laughed, shaky, into He Tian’s shoulder. He Tian couldn’t help but watch him.

‘If you want,’ He Tian said slowly, thumb brushing over the back of Guan Shan’s hand, ‘we could go to the bathroom.’

‘So you can watch me throw up?’

‘Or maybe I’ll be on my knees. Take your mind off it.’

Guan Shan snorted. ‘Do you ever think about anything other than sex?’

‘What kind of question is that.’

‘We’d get caught. There’s barely enough room for one person in there. It’s dirty.’

He Tian looked him over, eyes running over him, taking every part of him like it was the first time. Except now Guan Shan bloomed under that kind of look. ‘None of that sounds like a no,’ he said.

‘Doesn’t it?’ Guan Shan said. He swallowed. He Tian’s gaze was heavy. They were tired, and they’d been travelling nearly a day.

‘It’s a European flight,’ He Tian said, and he was right: they were the only two Chinese people on the flight. ‘They’re experimental like that. They won’t mind.’

Guan Shan had his mouth open, but He Tian was already unbuckling his seat, the click of a metal buckle hitting Guan Shan. They were going to do this. He Tian was already pulling on his wrist, leading him though the aisle of seats. The people they passed had their heads titled back in sleep, eye masks in place. The rest were staring glazed at the TV screens in the seats, eyes wandering blearily over a book. Outside, the sky was dark, the stars bright. Guan Shan thought he had never been this close to the moon.

It was unoccupied, and the cabin crew were hidden behind a curtain. Guan Shan bit his lip. ‘I don’t—’

‘Come on,’ He Tian murmured, pulling open the door. Guan Shan didn’t even get the chance to look around before he was shoved in, locked in, He Tian so _close._

They kissed first. Voraciously. Something tinged with airport tiredness, edged more by the dirty thrill of it. He Tian’s hand was down the front of Guan Shan’s jeans, mouth at his neck.

‘Got to be quiet, baby,’ He Tian murmured into his skin, the juncture where his neck sloped into his shoulder, thumb brushing across the leaking head of him, Guan Shan’s breath coming out in quiet gasps. He’d been hard before He Tian had unbuckled his seat.

He Tian didn’t waste time. More accurately: they couldn’t waste time.

There was hardly room for him when he pulled Guan Shan’s cock out from the open zip of his jeans, didn’t even pull them down. He was too tall for this kind of thing, and Guan Shan wanted to pull him up. Tell him not to. He could wait.

But Guan Shan was being pushed back, back of his knees hitting the toilet, and he could only stare at how He Tian looked, curled in on himself like that, cramped with his breath warm against Guan Shan’s cock, hot enough to make him shiver. He looked up at Guan Shan, and Guan Shan felt that look pin him, frozen. How dark his eyes were. How willing his lips. He was, almost, smiling.

‘What?’ Guan Shan said. He didn’t recognise his own voice. The low growl of it.

‘I might bite you.’

‘You’d better fucking not,’ Guan Shan warned him, hands in fists on the sides. _Just fucking do it_ , he wanted to say.

He Tian huffed a laugh. His breath was a torment. He said, ‘I hope there’s no turbulence.’

* * *

They reached Reykjavik intact.

He Tian didn’t stop smirking, and the guy at Passport Control gave him an odd look.

It was a surreal thing, walking through customs, into Arrivals, and seeing them standing there. There. Here. He Tian could barely register the sign for them – covered in glitter, Jian Yi’s work, in Zhengxi’s hands with a begrudging smile – before Jian Yi was upon them. He hugged them, gave Guan Shan a squeeze on his shoulder, ran a hand through He Tian’s hair that was getting greasy.

They probably smelled, and needed a shower, and Guan Shan thought that they had probably looked better. It was with some small pleasure that he realised He Tian did not, in fact, look like a model after a day of travelling. But it suited him. The chapped lips, the dry skin. The eyes that were hollowed and tired. A tongue that might still taste of Guan Shan’s come.

Guan Shan cleared his throat. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said.

‘You’re going to love it here,’ Jian Yi said in response.

Zhengxi’s smile was quiet. ‘Let’s just… Get their bags in the car.’

The drive to their apartment was quiet. Jian Yi told them about the cottage they used to own. How sweet it was. How, eventually, it got difficult for Zhengxi’s studies. How it was easy to get lost in each other when there was no one else around.

Zhengxi told Jian Yi he didn’t need to tell them that. Guan Shan kind of liked hearing it. He was watching He Tian smile at them, gaze wandering somewhere out the window as this strange, pale city passed them by, more town than city, the pastel walls of houses and buildings lit up by headlights and street lamps. He Tian’s thumb was brushing over his bottom lip in a slow, repeated motion, and it was captivating. He wore an expression that was tired and lazy and happy, and it gave him a kind of boyish youth that Guan Shan liked seeing on him. He remembered, not for the first, or the last time, that they could get married here.

The apartment, when they got to it, was huge, like He Tian’s, and half the price. The apartment block was a multi-coloured stretch of blue and white, and only had three floors. Inside everything was wooden and all the walls were white. Wooden beams hung across the ceiling, and the rugs throughout the place were patchworks of rusted red and brown thread.

‘Nice,’ He Tian said.

‘He complimented us, Xixi. _Complimented._ ’

‘I can be nice.’

For a moment, none of them said anything. Guan Shan was the first to laugh. And like that it bubbled around them, crept through as Zhengxi put their bags in their room and grabbed them a beer from the fridge. He Tian showered first – he took the beer with him. Guan Shan showered second. He did not.

‘The beer’s good here,’ He Tian said, as Guan Shan fell beside him on the sofa, brushing his hair over with a towel.

‘The coffee’s even better,’ Jian Yi said.

‘I get why you didn’t come back,’ said He Tian.

‘We didn’t—’ Jian Yi broke off. ‘It wasn’t what we’d planned.’

‘It’s still temporary,’ Zhengxi added.

‘And after tomorrow?’ Guan Shan said. ‘Graduation ceremony? You’re finished here then?’

‘Finished with university,’ Zhengxi said. _Not with everything._ They heard the unspoken words.      

They settled in the living area while Jian Yi drew the curtains and dimmed the lights. Zhengxi loaded up an episode of something on Netflix that none of them were really watching. The background noise was a low hum.

‘You’ve got everything sorted out,’ He Tian said. Like, at this point, it was dawning on him. Like was thinking about middle school and high school and every fucked up thing they all went through. How, remarkably, they were sitting around now drinking beer and everything was, remarkably, okay.

‘So have you,’ Zhengxi said. ‘You’ve got your job with your brother. Guan Shan’s nearly got his qualification for teaching.’

‘It’s not—It’s not a qualification,’ Guan Shan murmured. ‘It’s just training.’

‘Does it matter?’ He Tian said, quiet. ‘You’re doing it. You’re incredible.’

He Tian watched him swallow that. It was still difficult for him.

‘What about me?’ Jian Yi said. ‘I finished school at last, didn’t I?’

‘You’re incredible too,’ Zhengxi sighed. ‘Everyone’s great. We’re all fantastic. We’re fucking gods. That good enough for you?’

Jian Yi’s smile was the smile of a wicked child caught in the act. ‘All right.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ He Tian said. 

And they did. They drank, rather to a lot. To their health. To their families. To each other. To not being dead. To not having to pretend to be dead to stay alive. To be being alive. To being with each other. It was a long night, and in the end they got very, very drunk.

It turned out that they had a lot to be grateful for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/152333239939/aphorism-epilogue


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